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Book 






























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v 


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OLIYEE WENDELL HOLMES’S WHITINGS. 


Poetical Works. 

lvol. 16mo. With Portrait. $1.25. 

So Jigs in Many Keys. 

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Illustrated by Hoppin. 1 vol. 12mo, $ 1.25; 8vo, $ 3.00. 

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1 vol. 16mo. $ 1.25. 


JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Publishers. 




I 


SOUNDINGS 


3&>ocf 


FROM THE ATLANTIC 


' 

BY 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 



BOSTON: 

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 

1872. 








f3 r ^t r ! 3 ' 


Jy Tranifti 
JUN 6 uo; 

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press: 
Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 
Cambridge. 


TO 


JACOB BIGELOW, M. D., 

WHOSE VARIED ATTAINMENTS IN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART 
REFLECT THEIR MINGLED LIGHT ON THE PROFESSION 
WHICH HE ADORNS, 

THIS VOLUME OF ESSAYS 

* 

is 


Respectfully Dedicated , 





CONTENTS 


-♦— 

Pach 

Bread and the Newspaper . . . . 1 

My Hunt after “ The Captain ”... 24 

The Stereoscope and the Stereograph . .124 

Sun-Painting and Sun-Sculpture; with a Ster¬ 
eoscopic Trip across the Atlantic . .166 

Doings of the Sunbeam ..... 228 

The Human Wheel, its Spokes and Felloes . 282 

A Visit to the Autocrat’s Landlady . . 328 

A Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed 

Punsters ....... 348 

The Great Instrument ..... 362 


The Inevitable Trial 


401 






































































































ic v (|jB 



BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


T HIS is the new version of the Panem 
et Circenses of the Roman populace. 
It is our ultimatum , as that was theirs. They 
must have something to eat, and the circus- 
shows to look at. We must have something 
to eat, and the papers to read. 

Everything else we can give up. If we are 
rich, we can lay down our carriages, stay away 
from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip 
to Europe sine die . If we live in a small way, 
there are at least new dresses and bonnets and 
every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. 
If the young Zouave of the family looks smart 
in his new uniform, its respectable head is con¬ 
tent, though he himself grow seedy as a cara¬ 
way-umbel late in the season. He will cheer¬ 
fully calm the perturbed nap of his old beaver 

1 A 



2 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


by patient brushing in place of buying a new 
one, if only the Lieutenant’s jaunty cap is what 
it should be. We all take a pride in sharing 
the epidemic economy of the time. Only bread 
and the newspaper we must have, whatever else 
we do without. 

How this war is simplifying our mode of 
being! We live on our emotions, as the sick 
man is said in the common speech to be nour¬ 
ished by his fever. Our ordinary mental food 
has become distasteful, and what would have 
been intellectual luxuries at other times, are 
now absolutely repulsive. 

All this change in our manner of existence 
implies that we have experienced some very 
profound impression, which w r ill sooner or later 
betray itself in permanent effects on the minds 
and bodies of many among us. We cannot for¬ 
get Corvisart’s observation of the frequency 
with which diseases of the heart were noticed 
as the consequence of the terrible emotions pro¬ 
duced by the scenes of the great French Revo¬ 
lution. Laennec tells the story of a convent, 
of which he was the medical director, where all 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


3 


the nuns were subjected to the severest pen¬ 
ances and schooled in the most painful doc¬ 
trines. They all became consumptive soon after 
their entrance, so that, in the course of his ten 
years’ attendance, all the inmates died out two 
or three times, and were replaced by new ones. 
He does not hesitate to attribute the disease 
from which they suffered to those depressing 
moral influences to which they were subjected. 

So far we have noticed little more than dis¬ 
turbances of the nervous system as a conse¬ 
quence of the war excitement in non-comba¬ 
tants. Take the first trifling example which 
comes to our recollection. A sad disaster to 
the Federal army was told the other day in the 
presence of two gentlemen and a lady. Both 
the gentlemen complained of a sudden feeling 
at the epigastrium , or, less learnedly, the pit of 
the stomach, changed color, and confessed to a 
slight tremor about the knees. The lady had a 
“ grande revolution ,” as French patients say, — 
went home, and kept her bed for the rest of the 
day. Perhaps the reader may smile at the 
mention of such trivial indispositions, but in 


4 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


more sensitive natures death itself follows in 
some cases from no more serious cause. An 
old gentleman fell senseless in fatal apoplexy, on 
hearing of Napoleon’s return from Elba. One 
of our early friends, who recently died of the 
same complaint, was thought to have had his 
attack mainly in consequence of the excitements 
of the. time. 

We all know what the war fever is in our 
young men, — what a devouring passion it be¬ 
comes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is 
the fire of it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel 
of all sorts. The love of adventure, the con¬ 
tagion of example, the fear of losing the chance 
of participating in .the great events of the time, 
the desire of personal distinction, all help to 
produce those singular transformations which 
we often witness, turning the most peaceful of 
our youth into the most ardent of our soldiers. 
But something of the same fever in a different 
form reaches a good many non-combatants, who 
have no thought of losing a drop of precious 
blood belonging to themselves or their families. 
Some of the symptoms we shall mention are 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


5 


almost universal; they are as plain in the peo¬ 
ple we meet everywhere as the marks of an 
influenza, when that is prevailing. 

The first is a nervous restlessness of a very 
peculiar character. Men cannot think, or write, 
or attend to their ordinary business. They 
stroll up and down the streets, or saunter out 
upon the public places. We confessed to an 
illustrious author that we laid down the volume 
of his work which we were reading when the 
war broke out. It was as interesting as a ro¬ 
mance, but the romance of the past grew pale 
before the red light of the terrible present. 
Meeting the same author not long afterwards, 
he confessed that he had laid down his pen at 
the same time that we had closed his book. He 
could not write about the sixteenth century any 
more than we could read about it, while the 
nineteenth was in the very agony and bloody 
sweat of its great sacrifice. 

Another most eminent scholar told us in all 
simplicity that he had fallen into such a state 
that he would read the same telegraphic de¬ 
spatches over and over again in different papers, 


G 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


as if they were new, until he felt as if he were 
an idiot. Who did not do just the same thing, 
and does not often do it still, now that the first 
flush of the fever is over ? Another person 
always goes through the side streets on his way 
for the noon extra , — he is so afraid somebody 
will meet him and tell the news he wishes to 
read , first on the bulletin-board, and then in the 
great capitals and leaded type of the newspaper. 

When any startling piece of war-news comes, 
it keeps repeating itself in our minds in spite of 
all we can do. The same trains of thought go 
tramping round in circle through the brain, like 
the supernumeraries that make up the grand 
army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes 
round through the brain a thousand times in a 
day, it will have worn as deep a track as one 
which has passed through it once a week for 
twenty years. This accounts for the ages we 
seem to have lived since the twelfth of April 
last, and, to state it more generally, for that ex 
post facto operation of a great calamity, or any 
very powerful impression, which we once illus¬ 
trated by the image of a stain spreading back- 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


7 


wards from the leaf of life open before us 
through all those which we have already turned. 

Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in 
times like these! Yet, not wholly blessed, 
either ; for what is more painful than the awak¬ 
ing from peaceful unconsciousness to a sense 
that there is something wrong, — we cannot at 
first think what, — and then groping our way 
about through the twilight of our thoughts until 
we come full upon the misery, which, like some 
evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which 
sits waiting for us on its perch by our pillow in 
the gray of the morning ? 

The converse of this is perhaps still more 
painful. Many have the feeling in their waking 
hours that the trouble they are aching with is, 
after all, only a dream, — if they will rub their 
eyes briskly enough and shake themselves, they 
will awake out of it, and find all their supposed 
grief is unreal. This attempt to cajole our¬ 
selves out of an ugly fact always reminds us of 
those unhappy flies who have been indulging in 
the dangerous sweets of the paper prepared /or 
their especial use. 


8 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


Watch one of them. He does not feel quite 
well, — at least, he suspects himself of indis¬ 
position. Nothing serious, — let us just rub 
our fore-feet together, as the enormous creature 
who provides for us rubs his hands, and all will 
he right. He rubs them with that peculiar 
twisting movement of his, and pauses for the 
effect. No ! all is not quite right yet. Ah ! it 
is our head that is not set on just as it ought to 
be. Let us settle that where it should be, and 
then we shall certainly be in good trim again. 
So he pulls his head about as an old lady adjusts 
her cap, and passes his fore-paw over it like a 
kitten washing herself. — Poor fellow ! It is 
not a fancy, but a fact, that he has to deal with. 
If he could read the letters at the head of the 
sheet, he would see they were Fly-Paper . — So 
with us, when, in our waking misery, we try to 
think we dream ! Perhaps very young persons 
may not understand this ; as we grow older, 
our waking and dreaming life run more and 
more into each other. 

Another symptom of our excited condition is 
seen in the breaking up of old habits. The 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


9 


newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase ; 
it will be had, and it will be read. To this all 
else must give place. If we must go out at un¬ 
usual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of 
after-dinner nap or evening somnolence. If it 
finds us in company, it will not stand on cere¬ 
mony, but cuts short the compliment and the 
story by the divine right of its telegraphic de¬ 
spatches. 

War is a very old story, but it is a new one 
to this generation of Americans. Our own 
nearest relation in the ascending line remembers 
the Revolution well. How should she forget it ? 
Did she not lose her doll, which was left behind, 
when she was carried out of Boston, then grow¬ 
ing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls 
dropping in from the neighboring heights at all 
hours, — in token of which see the tower of 
Brattle-Street Church at this very day ? War 
in her memory means ’76. As for the brush of 
1812, “ we did not think much about that ” ; 
and everybody knows that the Mexican business 
did not concern us much, except in its political 


10 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


relations. No ! War is a new tiling to all of 
us who are not in the last quarter of their cen¬ 
tury. We are learning many strange matters 
from our fresh experience. And besides, there 
are new conditions of existence which make war 
as it is with us very different from war as it 
has been. 

The first and obvious difference consists in 
the fact that the whole nation is now pene¬ 
trated by the ramifications of a network of iron 
nerves which flash sensation and volition back¬ 
ward and forward to and from towns and prov¬ 
inces as if they were organs and limbs of a sin¬ 
gle living body. The second is the vast system 
of iron muscles which, as it were, move the 
limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. 
What was the railroad-force which put the Sixth 
Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th of April 
but a contraction and extension of the arm of 
Massachusetts with a clenched fist full of bayo¬ 
nets at the end of it ? 

This perpetual intercommunication, joined to 
the power of instantaneous action, keeps us al¬ 
ways alive with excitement. It is not a breath- 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. n 


less courier who comes back with the report 
from an army we have lost sight of for a month, 
nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to 
know for a week of some great engagement, 
but almost hourly paragraphs, laden with truth 
or falsehood as the case may be, making us rest¬ 
less always for the last fact or rumor they are 
telling. And so of the movements of our ar¬ 
mies. To-night the stout lumbermen of Maine 
are encamped under their own fragrant pines. 
In a score or two of hours they are among the 
tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. 
The war passion burned like scattered coals of 
fire in the households of Revolutionary times; 
now it rushes all through the land like a flame 
over the prairie. And this instant diffusion of 
every fact and feeling produces another singular 
effect in the equalizing and steadying of public 
opinion. We may not be able to see a month 
ahead of us; but as to what has passed, a 
week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out 
and judged as it would have been in a whole 
season before our national nervous system was 
organized. 


12 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


“ As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, 

Thou only teachest all that man can be! ” 

We indulged in the above apostrophe to War 
in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of long ago, which 
we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler’s 
beautiful prolonged lyric delivered at the recent 
anniversary of that Society. 

Oftentimes, in paroxysms of peace and good¬ 
will towards all mankind, we have felt twinges 
of conscience about the passage, — especially 
when one of our orators showed us that a ship 
of war costs as much to build and keep as a 
college, and that every port-hole we could stop 
would give us a new professor. Now we begin 
to think that there was some meaning; in our 
poor couplet. War has taught us, as nothing 
else could, what we can be and are. It has 
exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and 
driven us all back upon our substantial human 
qualities, for a long time more or less kept out 
of sight by the spirit of commerce, the love of 
art, science, or literature, or other qualities not 
belonging to all of us as men and women. 

It is at this very moment doing more to melt 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 13 


away the petty social distinctions which keep 
generous souls apart from each other, than the 
preaching of the Beloved Disciple himself would 
do. We are finding out that not only “ patri¬ 
otism is eloquence,” but that heroism is gentil¬ 
ity. All ranks are wonderfully equalized under 
the fire of a masked battery. The plain artisan 
or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and 
iron like a man, is the truest representative we 
can show of the heroes of Crecy and Agincourt. 
And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his 
straw-colored kids and stands by the other, 
shoulder to shoulder, or leads him on to the 
attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in 
theirs as if he were ill-dressed and his hands 
were soiled with labor. 

Even our poor “ Brahmins,” — whom a critic 
in ground-glass spectacles (the same who grasps 
his statistics by the blade and strikes at his sup¬ 
posed antagonist with the handle) oddly con 
founds with the “ bloated aristocracy,” whereas 
they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, 
shy, sensitive creatures, whose only birthright 
is an aptitude for learning, — even these poor 


14 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


New England Brahmins of ours, subvirates of 
an organizable base as they often are, count as 
full men, if their courage is big enough for the 
uniform which hangs so loosely about their slen¬ 
der figures. 

A young man was drowned not very long 
ago in the river running under our windows. A 
few days afterwards a field-piece was dragged 
to the water’s edge, and fired many times 
over the river. We asked a bystander, who 
looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It 
was to “ break the gall,” he said, and so bring 
the drowned person to the surface. A strange 
physiological fancy and a very odd non sequitur ; 
but that is not our present point. A good many 
extraordinary objects do really come to the sur¬ 
face when the great guns of war shake the 
waters, as when they roared over Charleston 
harbor. 

Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be 
huddled into its dishonorable grave. But the 
wrecks of precious virtues, which had been 
covered with the waves of prosperity, came 
up also And all sorts of unexpected and un- 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 15 


heard-of things, which had lain unseen during 
our national life of fourscore years, came up 
and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed 
by the concussions of the artillery bellowing 
around us. 

It is a shame to own it, but there were per¬ 
sons otherwise respectable not unwilling to say 
that they believed the old valor of Revolution¬ 
ary times had died out from among us. They 
talked about our own Northern people as the 
English in the last centuries used to talk about 
the French, — Goldsmith’s old soldier, it may 
be remembered, called one Englishman good for 
five of them. As Napoleon spoke of the Eng¬ 
lish, again, as a nation of shopkeepers, so these 
persons affected to consider the multitude of 
their countrymen as unwarlike artisans, — for¬ 
getting that Paul Revere taught himself the 
value of liberty in working upon gold, and 
Nathaniel Greene fitted himself to shape armies 
in the labor of forging iron. 

These persons have learned better now. The 
bravery of our free working-people was overlaid, 
but not smothered ; sunken, but not drowned. 


16 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


The hands which had been busy conquering 
the elements had only to change their weapons 
and their adversaries, and they were as ready 
to conquer the masses of living force opposed 
to them as they had been to build towns, to 
dam rivers, to hunt whales, to harvest ice, to 
hammer brute matter into every shape civiliza¬ 
tion can ask for. 

Another great fact came to the surface, and is 
coming up every day in new shapes, — that we 
are one people. It is easy to say that a man is 
a man in Maine or Minnesota, but not so easy 
to feel it, all through our bones and marrow. 
The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Poor 
Winthrop, marching with the city elSgants , 
seems to have been a little startled to find 
how wonderfully human were the hard-handed 
men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all 
the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do 
it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a coun¬ 
try is distributed over its surface. And then, 
just as we are beginning to think our own soil 
has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, 
up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


17 


the Sixty-Ninth, to show us that continen¬ 
tal provincialism is as bad as that of Coos 
County, New Hampshire, or of Broadway, New 
York. 

Here, too, side by side in the same great 
camp, are half a dozen chaplains, representing 
half a dozen modes of religious belief. When 
the masked battery opens, does the “ Baptist ” 
Lieutenant believe in his heart that God takes 
better care of him than of his “ Congregation- 
alist” Colonel? Does any man really suppose, 
that, of a score of noble young fellows who 
have just laid down their lives for their country, 
the JSomoousians are received to the mansions 
of bliss, and the Homoiousians translated from 
the battle-field to the abodes of everlasting 
woe ? War not only teaches what man can 
be, but it teaches also what he must not be. He 
must not be a bigot and a fool in the presence 
of that day of judgment proclaimed by the 
trumpet which calls to battle, and where a man 
should have but two thoughts : to do his duty, 
and trust his Maker. Let our brave dead come 
back from the fields where they have fallen for 


18 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


law and liberty, and if you will follow them to 
their graves, you will find out what the Broad 
Church means ; the narrow church is sparing 
of its exclusive formulae over the coffins wrap¬ 
ped in the flag which the fallen heroes had 
defended ! Very little comparatively do we 
hear at such times of the dogmas on which men 
differ; very much of the faith and trust in 
which all sincere Christians can agree. It is a 
noble lesson, and nothing less noisy than the 
voice of cannon can teach it so that it shall be 
heard over all the angry cries of theological 
disputants. 

Now, too, we have a chance to test the sa¬ 
gacity of our friends, and to get at their prin¬ 
ciples of judgment. Perhaps most of us will 
agree that our faith in domestic prophets has 
been diminished by the experience of the last 
six months. We had the notable predictions 
attributed to the Secretary of State, which so 
unpleasantly refused to fulfil themselves. We 
were infested at one time with a set of ominous- 
looking seers, who shook their heads and mut¬ 
tered obscurely about some mighty preparations 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 19 


that were making to substitute the rule of the 
minority for that of the majority. Organiza¬ 
tions were darkly hinted at; some thought our 
armories would be seized ; and there are not 
wanting ancient women in the neighboring 
University town who consider that the country 
■was saved by the intrepid band of students who 
stood guard, night after night, over the G. R. 
cannon and the pile of balls in the Cambridge 
Arsenal. 

As a general rule, it is safe to say that the 
best prophecies are those which the sages remem¬ 
ber after the event prophesied of has come to 
pass, and remind us that they have made long 
ago. Those who are rash enough to predict 
publicly beforehand commonly give us what 
they hope, or what they fear, or some conclu¬ 
sion from an abstraction of their own, or some 
guess founded on private information not half so 
good as what everybody gets who reads the 
papers, — never by any possibility a word that 
we can depend on, simply because there are 
cobwebs of contingency between every to-day 
and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate 


20 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


when fifty of them lie woven one over another. 
Prophesy as much as you like, but always hedge . 
Say that you think the rebels are weaker than 
is commonly supposed, but, on the other hand, 
that they may prove to be even stronger than is 
anticipated. Say what you like, — only don’t 
be too peremptory and dogmatic ; we know that 
wiser men than you have been notoriously de¬ 
ceived in their predictions in this very matter. 

Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis. 

Let that be your model; and remember, on 
peril of your reputation as a prophet, not to put 
a stop before or after the nunquam. 

There are two or three facts connected with 
time , besides that already referred to, which 
strike us very forcibly in their relation to the 
great events passing around us. We spoke of 
the long period seeming to have elapsed since 
this war began. The buds were then swelling 
which held the leaves that are still green. It 
seems as old as Time himself. We cannot fail 
to observe how the mind brings together the 
scenes of to-day and those of the old Revolu¬ 
tion. We shut up eighty years into each other 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 21 


like the joints of a pocket-telescope. When the 
young men from Middlesex dropped in Balti¬ 
more the other day, it seemed to bring Lexing¬ 
ton and the other Nineteenth of April close to 
us. War has always been the mint in which 
the world’s history has been coined, and now 
every day or week or month has a new medal 
for us. It was Warren that the first impression 
bore in the last great coinage ; if it is Ellsworth 
now, the new face hardly seems fresher than the 
old. All battle-fields are alike in their main 
features. The young fellows who fell in our 
earlier struggle seemed like old men to us until 
within these few months ; now we remember 
they were like these fiery youth we are cheer¬ 
ing as they go to the fight; it seems as if the 
grass of our bloody hillside was crimsoned but 
yesterday, and the cannon-ball imbedded in the 
church-tower would feel warm, if we laid our 
hand upon it. 

Nay, in this our quickened life we feel that all 
the battles from earliest time to our own day, 
where Right and Wrong have grappled, are 
but one great battle, varied with brief pauses or 
hasty bivouacs upon the field of conflict. The 


22 BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 


issues seem to vary, but it is always a right 
against a claim, and, however the struggle of 
the hour may go, a movement onward of the 
campaign, which uses defeat as well as victory 
to serve its mighty ends. The very weapons of 
our warfare change less than we think. Our 
bullets and cannon-balls have lengthened into 
bolts like those which whistled out of old arba¬ 
lests. Our soldiers fight with bowie-knives, 
such as are pictured on the walls of Theban 
tombs, wearing a newly invented head-gear as 
old as the days of the Pyramids. 

Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, 
it is making us wiser, and, we trust, better. 
Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our 
narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in 
lessons of sorrow and shame. Better, because 
all that is noble in men and women is demand¬ 
ed by the time, and our people are rising to the 
standard the time calls for. For this is the 
question the hour is putting to each of us : Are 
you ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you 
have and hope for in this world, that the gener¬ 
ations to follow you may inherit a whole coun¬ 
try whose natural condition shall be peace, and 


BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. 23 


not a broken province which must live under 
the perpetual threat, if not in the constant 
presence, of war and all that war brings with 
it ? If we are all ready for this sacrifice, bat¬ 
tles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand 
object must be won. 

Heaven is very kind in its way of putting 
questions to mortals. We are not abruptly 
asked to give up all that we most care for, in 
view of the momentous issues before us. Per¬ 
haps we shall never be asked to give up all, but 
we have already been called upon to part with 
much that is dear to us, and should be ready to 
yield the rest as it is called for. The time may 
come when even the cheap public print shall be 
a burden our means cannot support, and we can 
only listen in the square that was once the mar¬ 
ket-place to the voices of those who proclaim 
defeat or victory. Then there will be only our 
daily food left. When we have nothing to read 
and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable mo¬ 
ment to offer a compromise. At present we 
have all that nature absolutely demands, — we 
can live on bread and the newspaper. 


MY HUNT AFTER “THE CAPTAIN.’’ 


I N tlie dead of the night which closed upon 
the bloody field of Antietam, my house¬ 
hold was startled from its slumbers by the loud 
summons of a telegraphic messenger. The air 
had been heavy all day with rumors of battle, 
and thousands and tens of thousands had walked 
the streets with throbbing hearts, in dread an¬ 
ticipation of the tidings any hour might bring. 

We rose hastily, and presently the messenger 
was admitted. I took the envelope from his 
hand, opened it, and read : — 


Hagerstown 17th 

To-H- 

Capt H-wounded shot through the neck 

thought not mortal at Keedysville 

William G Leduo 






MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 25 


Through the neck, — no bullet left in wound. 
Windpipe, food-pipe, carotid, jugular, half a 
dozen smaller, but still formidable vessels, a 
great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp- 
wick, spinal cord, — ought to kill at once, if 
at all. Thought not mortal, or not thought mor¬ 
tal, — which was it ? The first ; that is better 
than the second would be. — “ Keedysville, a 
post-office, Washington Co., Maryland.” Le- 
duc ? Leduc ? Don’t remember that name. — 
The boy is waiting for his money. A dollar 
and thirteen cents. Has nobody got thirteen 
cents ? Don’t keep that boy waiting, — how do 
we know what messages he has got to carry ? 

The boy had another message to carry. It 
was to the father of Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder 
Dwight, informing him that his son was griev¬ 
ously wounded in the same battle, and was ly¬ 
ing at Boonsborough, a town a few miles this 
side of Keedysville. This I learned the next 
morning from the civil and attentive officials at 
the Central Telegraph-Office. 

Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he 
meant to leave in the quarter past two o’clock 


2 


26 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAP TAINT 


train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an 
accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to 
any difficult question or pressing emergency. I 
agreed to accompany them, and we met in the 
cars. I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in hav¬ 
ing companions whose society would be a pleas¬ 
ure, whose feelings would harmonize with my 
own, and whose assistance I might, in case of 
need, be glad to claim. 

It is of the journey which we began together, 
and which I finished apart, that I mean to give 
my “ Atlantic ” readers an account. They 
must let me tell my story in my own way, 
speaking of many little matters that interested 
or amused me, and which a certain leisurely 
class of elderly persons, who sit at their firesides 
and never travel, will, I hope, follow with a 
kind of interest. For, besides the main object 
of my excursion, I could not help being excited 
by the incidental sights and occurrences of a 
trip which to a commercial traveller or a news¬ 
paper-reporter would seem quite commonplace 
and undeserving of record. There are periods 
in which all places and people seem to be in a 


MY HUNT AFTER « THE CAPTAIN” 27 


conspiracy to impress us with their individuali¬ 
ty, — in which every ordinary locality seems to 
assume a special significance and to claim a par¬ 
ticular notice, — in which every person we meet 
is either an old acquaintance or a character ; 
days in which the strangest coincidences are con¬ 
tinually happening, so that they get to be the 
rule, and not the exception. Some might natu¬ 
rally think that anxiety and the weariness of a 
prolonged search after a near relative would 
have prevented my taking any interest in or 
paying any regard to the little matters around 
me. Perhaps it had just the contrary effect, and 
acted like a diffused stimulus upon the attention. 
When all the faculties are wide-awake in pur¬ 
suit of a single object, or fixed in the spasm of 
an absorbing emotion, they are oftentimes clair¬ 
voyant in a marvellous degree in respect to 
many collateral things, as Wordsworth has so 
forcibly illustrated in his sonnet on the Boy of 
Windermere, and as Hawthorne has developed 
with such metaphysical accuracy in that chap¬ 
ter of his wondrous story where Hester walks 
forth to meet her punishment 


28 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

Be that as it may, — though I set out with a 
lull and heavy heart, though many times my 
blood chilled with what were perhaps needless 
and unwise fears, though I broke through all 
my habits without thinking about them, which 
is almost as hard in certain circumstances as for 
one of our young fellows to leave his sweet¬ 
heart and go into a Peninsular campaign, though 
I did not always know when I was hungry nor 
discover that I was thirsting, though I had a 
worrying ache and inward tremor underlying 
all the outward play of the senses and the mind, 
yet it is the simple truth that I did look out of 
the car-windows with an eye for all that passed, 
that I did take cognizance of strange sights and 
singular people, that I did act much as persons 
act from the ordinary promptings of curiosity, 
and from time to time even laugh very nearly 
as those do who are attacked with a convulsive 
sense of the ridiculous, the epilepsy of the 
diaphragm. 

By a mutual compact, we talked little in the 
cars. A communicative friend is the greatest 
nuisance to have at one’s side during a railroad- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 29 

journey, especially if his conversation is stimu¬ 
lating and in itself agreeable. 44 A fast train 
and a 4 slow ’ neighbor,” is my motto. Many 
times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting 
to be magnetized into an hour or two of blissful 
reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the vibra¬ 
tions into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, 
arranging themselves in curves and nodal 
points, like the grains of sand in Chladni’s fa¬ 
mous experiment, — fresh ideas coming up to 
the surface, as the kernels do when a measure 
of corn is jolted in a farmer’s wagon, — all this 
without volition, the mechanical impulse alone 
keeping the thoughts in motion, as the mere act 
of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps 
them wound up, — many times, I say, just as 
my brain was beginning to creep and hum with 
this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear 
detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, ra¬ 
diant, has come up and sat down by me and 
opened a conversation which has broken my 
day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that 
were whirling along my fancies and hitched on 
the old weary omnibus-team of every-day as- 


30 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 


sociations, fatigued my hearing and attention, 
exhausted my voice, and milked the breasts of 
my thought dry during the hour when they 
should have been filling themselves full of fresh 
juices. My friends spared me this trial. 

So, then, I sat by the window and enjoyed 
the slight tipsiness produced by short, limited, 
rapid oscillations, which I take to be the exhil¬ 
arating stage of that condition which reaches 
hopeless inebriety in what we know as sea-sick¬ 
ness. Where the horizon opened widely, it 
pleased me to watch the curious effect of the 
rapid movement of near objects contrasted with 
the slow motion of distant ones. Looking from 
a right-hand window, for instance, the fences 
close by glide swiftly backward, or to the right, 
while the distant hills not only do not appear to 
move backward, but look by contrast with the 
fences near at hand as if they were moving for¬ 
ward, or to the left; and thus the whole land¬ 
scape becomes a mighty wheel revolving about 
an imaginary axis somewhere in the middle- 
distance. 

My companions proposed to stay at one of 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAP TAINT 31 


the best-known and longest-established of the 
New-York caravansaries, and I accompanied 
them. We were particularly well lodged, and 
not uncivilly treated. The traveller who sup¬ 
poses that he is to repeat the melancholy experi¬ 
ence of Shenstone, and have to sigh over the 
reflection that he has found “ his warmest wel¬ 
come at an inn,” has something to learn at the 
offices of the great city hotels. The unheralded 
guest who is honored by mere indifference may 
think himself blessed with singular good-for¬ 
tune. If the despot of the Patent-Annunciator 
is only mildly contemptuous in his manner, let 
the victim look upon it as a personal favor. 
The coldest welcome that a threadbare curate 
ever got at the door of a bishop’s palace, the 
most icy reception that a country cousin ever 
received at the city mansion of a mushroom mil- 
lionnaire, is agreeably tepid, compared to that 
which the Rhadamanthus who dooms you to the 
more or less elevated circle of his inverted In¬ 
ferno vouchsafes, as you step up to enter your 
name on his dog’s-eared register. I have less 
hesitation in unburdening myself of this uncom- 


32 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


for table statement, as on this particular trip 1 
met with more than one exception to the rule. 
Officials become brutalized, I suppose, as a mat¬ 
ter of course. One cannot expect an office 
clerk to embrace tenderly every stranger who 
comes in with a carpet-bag, or a telegraph oper¬ 
ator to burst into tears over every unpleasant 
message he receives for transmission. Still, hu¬ 
manity is not always totally. extinguished in 
these persons. I discovered a youth in a tele¬ 
graph-office of the Continental Hotel, in Phila¬ 
delphia, who was as pleasant in conversation, 
and as graciously responsive to inoffensive ques¬ 
tions, as if I had been his childless opulent 
uncle and my will not made. 

On the road again the next morning, over 
the ferry, into the cars with sliding panels and 
fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side 
of the car may be made transparent. New 
Jersey is, to the apprehension of a traveller, a 
double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its 
dull red dust looks like the dried and powdered 
mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are com¬ 
mon, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 33 


drawn by mules, swim by, feeling their way 
along like blind men led by dogs. I had a 
mighty passion come over me to be the captain 
of one, — to glide back and forward upon a sea 
never roughened by storms, — to float where I 
could not sink, — to navigate where there is no 
shipwreck, — to lie languidly on the deck and 
govern the huge craft by a word or the move¬ 
ment of a finger: there was something of rail¬ 
road intoxication in the fancy; but who has not 
often envied a cobbler in his stall ? 

The boys cry the “ N’-York Heddle ,” instead 
of “ Herald ” ; I remember that years ago in 
Philadelphia; we must be getting near the far¬ 
ther end of the dumb-bell suburb. A bridge 
has been swept away by a rise of the waters, 
so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. 
Her physiognomy is not distinguished ; nez 
camus, as a Frenchman would say ; no illustri¬ 
ous steeple, no imposing tower ; the water-edge 
of the town looking bedraggled, like the flounce 
of a vulgar rich woman’s dress that trails on the 
sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the 
wharves, elephantine in bulk and color, her 
2 * 


O 


34 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


sides narrowing as they rise, like the walls of 
a hock-glass. 

I went straight to the house in Walnut Street 
where the Captain would be heard of, if any¬ 
where in this region. His lieutenant-colonel 
was there gravely wounded ; his college-friend 
and comrade in arms, a son of the house, was 
there, injured in a similar way ; another soldier, 
brother of the last, was there, prostrate with 
fever. A fourth bed was waiting ready for the 
Captain, but not one word had been heard of 
him, though inquiries had been made in the 
towns from and through which the father had 
brought his two sons and the lieutenant-colonel. 
And so my search is, like a “ Ledger ” story, to 
be continued. 

I rejoined my companions in time to take the 
noon-train for Baltimore. Our company was 
gaining in number as it moved onwards. We 
had found upon the train from New York a 
lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our most 
spirited Massachusetts officers, the brave Colonel 

of the -th Regiment, going to seek her 

wounded husband at Middletown, a place lying 



MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 35 


directly in our track. She was the light of our 
party while we were together on our pilgrim¬ 
age, a fair, gracious woman, gentle, but cour¬ 
ageous, 

-“ ful plesant and amiable of port, 

-estatelich of manere, 

And to ben holden digne of reverence.” 

On the road from Philadelphia, I found in 
the same car with our party Dr. William Hunt, 
of Philadelphia, who had most kindly and faith¬ 
fully attended the Captain, then the Lieutenant, 
after a wound received at Ball’s Bluff, which 
came very near being mortal. He was going 
upon an errand of mercy to the wounded, and 
found he had in his memorandum-book the 
name of our lady’s husband, the Colonel, who 
had been commended to his particular attention. 

Not long after leaving Philadelphia, we passed 
a solitary sentry keeping guard over a short 
railroad-bridge. It was the first evidence that 
we were approaching the perilous borders, the 
marches where the North and the South mingle 
their angry hosts, where the extremes of our 
so-called civilization meet in conflict, and the 
fierce slave-driver of the Lower Mississippi 


36 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN .’ 


stares into the stern eyes of the forest-feller 
from the banks of the Aroostook. All the way 
along, the bridges were guarded more or less 
strongly. In a vast country like ours, commu¬ 
nications play a far more complex part than in 
Europe, where the whole territory available for 
strategic purposes is so comparatively limited. 
Belgium, for instance, has long been the bowl¬ 
ing-alley where kings roll cannon-balls at each 
other’s armies ; but here we are playing the 
game of live ninepins without any alley. 

We were obliged to stay in Baltimore over¬ 
night, as we were too late for the train to Fred¬ 
erick. At the Eutaw House, where we found 
both comfort and courtesy, we met a number of 
friends, who beguiled the evening hours for us 
in the most agreeable manner. We devoted 
some time to procuring surgical and other arti¬ 
cles, such as* might be useful to our friends, or 
to others, if our friends should not need them. 
In the morning, I found myself seated at the 
breakfast-table next to General Wool. It did 
not surprise me to find the General very far 
from expansive. With Fort McHenry on his 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAP TAINT 37 


shoulders and Baltimore in his breeches-pocket, 
and the weight of a military department loading 
down his social safety-valves, I thought it a 
great deal for an officer in his trying position to 
select so very obliging and affable an aid as the 
gentleman who relieved him of the burden of 
attending to strangers. 

We left the Eutaw House, to take the cars 
for Frederick. As we stood waiting on the 
platform, a telegraphic message was handed in 
silence to my companion. Sad news : the life¬ 
less body of the son he was hastening to see was 
even now on its way to him in Baltimore. It 
was no time for empty words of consolation : I 
knew what he had lost, and that now was not 
the time to intrude upon a grief borne as men 
bear it, felt as women feel it. 

Colonel Wilder Dwight was first made known 
to me as the friend of a beloved relative of my 
own, who was with him during a severe illness 
in Switzerland, and for whom while living, and 
for whose memory when dead, he retained the 
warmest affection. Since that, the story of his 
noble deeds of daring, of his capture and es- 


38 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


cape, and a brief visit home before he was able 
to rejoin his regiment, had made his name fa¬ 
miliar to many among us, myself among the 
number. His memory has been honored by 
those who had the largest opportunity of know¬ 
ing his rare promise, as a man of talents and 
energy of nature. His abounding vitality must 
have produced its impression on all who met 
him ; there was a still fire about him which any 
one could see would blaze up to melt all difficul¬ 
ties and recast obstacles into implements in the 
mould of an heroic will. These elements of his 
character many had the chance of knowing ; 
but I shall always associate him with the mem¬ 
ory of that pure and noble friendship which 
made me feel that I knew him before I looked 
upon his face, and added a personal tenderness 
to the sense of loss which I share with the 
whole community. 

Here, then, I parted, sorrowfully, from the 
companions with whom I set out on my jour¬ 
ney. 

In one of the cars, at the same station, we 
met General Shriver, of Frederick, a most loyal 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 39 

Unionist, whose name is synonymous with a 
hearty welcome to all whom he can aid by his 
counsel and his hospitality. He took great 
pains to give us all the information we needed, 
and expressed the hope, which was afterwards 
fulfilled, to the great gratification of some of us, 
that we should meet again when he should re¬ 
turn to his home. 

There was nothing worthy of special note in 
the trip to Frederick, except our passing a squad 
of Rebel prisoners, whom I missed seeing, as 
they flashed by, hut who were said to he a most 
forlorn-looking crowd of scarecrows. Arrived 
at the Monocacy River, about three miles this 
side of Frederick, we came to a halt, for the 
railroad-bridge had been blown up by the Reb¬ 
els, and its iron pillars and arches were lying 
in the bed of the river. The unfortunate 
wretch who fired the train was killed by the 
explosion, and lay buried hard by, his hands 
sticking out of the shallow grave into which he 
had been huddled. This was the story they 
told us, but whether true or not I must leave 
to the correspondents of “ Notes and Queries ” 
to settle. 


40 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


There was a great confusion of carriages and 
wagons at the stopping-place of the train, so 
that it was a long time before I could get any¬ 
thing that would carry us. At last I was lucky 
enough to light on a sturdy wagon, drawn by a 
pair of serviceable bays, and driven by James 
Gray den, with whom I was destined to have a 
somewhat continued acquaintance. We took 
up a little girl who had been in Baltimore 
during the late Rebel inroad. It made me 
think of the time when my own mother, at that 
time six years old, was hurried off from Boston, 
then occupied by the British soldiers, to New- 
buryport, and heard the people saying that “ the 
redcoats were coming, killing and murdering 
everybody as they went along.” Frederick 
looked cheerful for a place that had so recently 
been in an enemy’s hands. Here and there a 
house or shop was shut up, but the national 
colors were waving in all directions, and the 
general aspect was peaceful and contented. I 
saw no bullet-marks or other sign of the fight¬ 
ing which had gone on in the streets. The 
Colonel’s lady was taken in charge by a daugh- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.’* 41 


ter of that hospitable family to which we had 
been commended by its head, and I proceeded 
to inquire for wounded officers at the various 
temporary hospitals. 

At the United States Hotel, where many 
were lying, I heard mention of an officer in an 
upper chamber, and, going there, found Lieu¬ 
tenant Abbott, of the Twentieth Massachusetts 
Volunteers, lying ill with what looked like ty¬ 
phoid fever. While there, who should come in 
but the almost ubiquitous Lieutenant Wilkins, 
of the same Twentieth, whom I had met repeat¬ 
edly before on errands of kindness or duty, 
and who was just from the battle-ground. He 
was going to Boston in charge of the body of 
the lamented Dr. Revere, the Assistant Surgeon 
of the regiment, killed on the field. From his 
lips I learned something of the mishaps of the 
regiment. My Captain’s wound he spoke of 
as less grave than at first thought; but he 
mentioned incidentally having heard a story 
recently that he was killed , — a fiction, doubt¬ 
less, — a mistake, — a palpable absurdity, — 
not to be remembered or made any account 


42 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

of. 0 no ! but what dull ache is this in that 
obscurely sensitive region, somewhere below 
the heart, where the nervous centre called 
the semilunar ganglion lies unconscious of 
itself until a great grief or a mastering anxi¬ 
ety reaches it through all the non-conductors 
which isolate it from ordinary impressions? 
I talked awhile with Lieutenant Abbott, who 
lay prostrate, feeble, but soldier-like and un¬ 
complaining, carefully waited upon by a most 
excellent lady, a captain’s wife, New-England- 
born, loyal as the Liberty on a golden ten- 
dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough to 
have sat for that goddess’s portrait. She had 
stayed in Frederick through the Rebel inroad, 
and kept the star-spangled banner where it 
would be safe, to unroll it as the last Rebel 
hoofs clattered off from the pavement of the 
town. 

Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy 
gentleman, occupying a small chamber, and 
filling it with his troubles. When he gets well 
and plump, I know he will forgive me if I con¬ 
fess that I could not help smiling in the midst 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 43 


of my sympathy for him. He had been a well- 
favored man, he said, sweeping his hand in a 
semicircle, which implied that his acute-angled 
countenance had once filled the goodly curve 
he described. He was now a perfect Don 
Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made 
him querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped 
his grievances to me in a thin voice, with that 
finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone 
can command. He was starving, — he could 
not get what he wanted to eat. He was in 
need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful 
two-ounce phial containing three thimblefuls of 
brandy, — his whole stock of that encouraging 
article. Him I consoled to the best of my abil¬ 
ity, and afterwards, in some slight measure, 
supplied his wants. Feed this poor gentleman 
up, as these good people soon will, and I should 
not know him, nor he himself. We are all 
egotists in sickness and debility. An animal 
has been defined as “ a stomach ministered to 
by organs; ” and the greatest man comes very 
near this simple formula after a month or two 
of fever and starvation. 


44 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 


James Grayden and his team pleased me well 
enough, and so I made a bargain with him to 
take us, the lady and myself, on our further 
journey as far as Middletown. As we were 
about starting from the front of the United 
States Hotel, two gentlemen presented them¬ 
selves and expressed a wish to be allowed to 
share our conveyance. I looked at them and 
convinced myself that they were neither Rebels 
in disguise, nor deserters, nor camp-followers, 
nor miscreants, but plain, honest men on a 
proper errand. The first of them I will pass 
over briefly. He was a young man of mild and 
modest demeanor, chaplain to a Pennsylvania 
regiment, which he was going to rejoin. He 
belonged to the Moravian Church, of which I 
had the misfortune to know little more than 
what I had learned from Southey’s “ Life of 
Wesley,” and from the exquisite hymns we have 
borrowed from its rhapsodists. The other stran¬ 
ger was a New-Englander of respectable ap¬ 
pearance, with a grave, hard, honest, hay-beard¬ 
ed face, who had come to serve the sick and 
wounded on the battle-field and in its immedi- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 45 


ate neighborhood. There is no reason why I 
should not mention his name, but I shall con¬ 
tent myself with calling him the Philanthro¬ 
pist. 

So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the ser¬ 
viceable bays, with James Grayden their driv¬ 
er, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore 
up through all delays and discomforts, the 
Chaplain, the Philanthropist, and myself, the 
teller of this story. 

And now, as we emerged from Frederick, 
we struck at once upon the trail from the great 
battle-field. The road was filled with straggling 
and wounded soldiers. All who could travel 
on foot — multitudes with slight wounds of the 
upper limbs, the head or face — were told to 
take up their beds — a light burden or none at 
all — and walk. Just as the battle-field sucks 
everything into its red vortex for the conflict, 
so does it drive everything off in long, diverg¬ 
ing rays after the fierce centripetal forces have 
met and neutralized each other. For more 
than a week there had been sharp fighting all 
along this road. Through the streets of Fred- 


46 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.' 


erick, through Crampton’s Gap, over South 
Mountain, sweeping at last the hills and the 
woods that skirt the windings of the Antietam, 
the long battle had travelled, like one of those 
tornadoes which tear their path through our 
fields and villages. The slain of higher con¬ 
dition, u embalmed ” and iron-cased, were slid¬ 
ing off on the railways to their far homes ; the 
dead of the rank-and-file were being gathered 
up and committed hastily to the earth ; the 
gravely wounded were cared for hard by the 
scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along 
to the neighboring villages ; while those who 
could walk were meeting us, as I have said, at 
every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, 
truly pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the 
possibility of relief, that many single sorrows of 
small dimensions have wrought upon my feel¬ 
ings more than the sight of this great caravan 
of maimed pilgrims. The companionship of 
so many seemed to make a joint-stock of their 
suffering; it was next to impossible to indi¬ 
vidualize it, and so bring it home as one can 
do with a single broken limb or aching wound. 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 47 

Then they were all of the male sex, and in 
the freshness or the prime of their strength. 
Though they tramped so wearily along, yet 
there was rest and kind nursing in store for 
them. These wounds they bore would be the 
medals they would show their children and 
grandchildren by and by. Who would not 
rather wear his decorations beneath his uni¬ 
form than on it ? 

Yet among them were figures which arrested 
our attention and sympathy. Delicate boys, 
with more spirit than strength, flushed with 
fever or pale with exhaustion or haggard with 
suffering, dragged their weary limbs along as if 
each step would exhaust their slender store of 
strength. At the roadside sat or lay others, 
quite spent with their journey. Here and there 
was a house at which the wayfarers would stop, 
in the hope, I fear often vain, of getting re¬ 
freshment ; and in one place was a clear, cool 
spring, where the little bands of the long pro¬ 
cession halted for a few moments, as the trains 
that traverse the desert rest by its fountains. 
My companions had brought a few peaches 


48 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

along with them, which the Philanthropist be¬ 
stowed upon the tired and thirsty soldiers with 
a satisfaction which we all shared. I had with 
me a small flask of strong waters, to be used as 
a medicine in case of inward grief. From this, 
also, he dispensed relief, without hesitation, to 
a poor fellow who looked as if he needed it. I 
rather admired the simplicity with which he 
applied my limited means of solace to the first- 
comer who wanted it more than I; a genuine 
benevolent impulse does not stand on cere¬ 
mony, and had I perished of colic for want 
of a stimulus that night, I should not have 
reproached my friend the Philanthropist, any 
more than I grudged my other ardent friend 
the two dollars and more which it cost me to 
send the charitable message he left in my hands. 

It was a lovely country through which we 
were riding. The hillsides rolled away into 
the distance, slanting up fair and broad to the 
sun, as one sees them in the open parts of the 
Berkshire Valley, at Lanesborough, for instance, 
or in the many-hued mountain-chalice at the 
bottom of which the Shaker houses of Lebanon 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAP TAINT 43 


have shaped themselves like a sediment of cu¬ 
bical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, 
and the land ploughed for a new crop. There 
was Indian-corn standing, but I saw no pump¬ 
kins warming their yellow carapaces in the sun¬ 
shine like so many turtles ; only in a single 
instance did I notice some wretched little minia¬ 
ture specimens in form and hue not unlike those 
colossal oranges of our cornfields. The rail- 
fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cin¬ 
ders of extinguished fires showed the use to 
which they had been applied. The houses 
along the road were not for the most part neat¬ 
ly kept ; the garden fences were poorly built 
of laths or long slats, and very rarely of trim 
aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride 
in the saddle very generally, rather than drive. 
They looked sober and stern, less curious and 
lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type 
of features familiar to us in the countenance of 
the late John Tyler, our accidental President, 
was frequently met with. The women were 
still more distinguishable from our New-Eng- 
land pattern* Soft, sallow, succulent, delicately 


3 


D 


50 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


finished about the mouth and firmly shaped 
about the chin, dark-eyed, full-throated, they 
looked as if they had been grown in a land of 
olives. There was a little toss in their move¬ 
ment, full of muliebrity. I fancied there was 
something more of the duck and less of the 
chicken about them, as compared with the 
daughters of our leaner soil ; but these are 
mere impressions caught from stray glances, 
and if there is any offence in them, my fair 
readers may consider them all retracted. 

At intervals, a dead horse lay by the road¬ 
side, or in the fields, unburied, not grateful to 
gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no ill- 
omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of 
death, or at the place where it was held. The 
vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, tho 
“ twa corbies ” of the ghastly ballad, are all 
from Nature, doubtless ; but no black wing was 
spread over these animal ruins, and no call to 
the banquet pierced through the heavy-laden 
and sickening air. 

Full in the middle of the road, caring little 
for whom or what they met, came long strings 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAINS 51 


of army-wagons, returning empty from the 
front after supplies. James Grayden stated it 
as his conviction that they had a little rather 
run into a fellow than not. I liked the looks 
of these equipages and their drivers ; they 
meant business. Drawn by mules mostly, six, 
I think, to a wagon, powdered well with dust, 
wagon, beast, and driver, they came jogging 
along the road, turning neither to right nor left, 
— some driven by bearded, solemn white men, 
some by careless, saucy-looking negroes, of a 
blackness like that of anthracite or obsidian. 
There seemed to be nothing about them, dead 
or alive, that was not serviceable. Sometimes 
a mule would give out on the road; then he 
was left where he lay, until by and by he would 
think better of it, and get up, when the first 
public wagon that came along would hitch him 
on, and restore him to the sphere of duty. 

It was evening when we got to Middletown. 
The gentle lady who had graced our homely 
conveyance with her company here left us. 
She found her husband, the gallant Colonel, in 
very comfortable quarters, well cared for, very 


52 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

weak from the effects of the fearful operation 
he had been compelled to undergo, but show¬ 
ing the same calm courage to endure as he had 
shown manly energy to act. It was a meeting 
full of heroism and tenderness, of which I heard 
more than there is need to tell. Health to the 
brave soldier, and peace to the household over 
which so fair a spirit presides ! 

Dr. Thompson, the very active and intelli¬ 
gent surgical director of the hospitals of the 
place, took me in charge. He carried me to 
the house of a worthy and benevolent clergy¬ 
man of the German Reformed Church, where 
I was to take tea and pass the night. What 
became of the Moravian chaplain I did not 
know ; but my friend the Philanthropist had 
evidently made up his mind to adhere to ’my 
fortunes. He followed me, therefore, to the 
house of the “ Dominie,” as a newspaper-corre¬ 
spondent calls my kind host, and partook of the 
fare there furnished me. He withdrew with 
me to the apartment assigned for my slumbers, 
and slept sweetly on the same pillow where I 
waked and tossed. Nay, I do affirm that he 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN ” 53 


did, unconsciously, I believe, encroach on that 
moiety of the couch which I had flattered my¬ 
self was to be my own through the watches of 
the night, and that I was in serious doubt at 
one time whether I should not be gradually, 
but irresistibly, expelled from the bed which I 
had supposed destined for my sole possession. 
As Ruth clave unto Naomi, so my friend the 
Philanthropist clave unto me. “ Whither thou 
goest, I will go ; and where thou lodgest, I will 
lodge.” A really kind, good man, full of zeal, 
determined to help somebody, and absorbed in 
his one thought, he doubted nobody’s willing¬ 
ness to serve him, going, as he was, on a purely 
benevolent errand. When he reads this, as I 
hope he will, let him be assured of my esteem 
and respect; and if he gained any accommoda¬ 
tion from being in my company, let me tell 
him that I learned a lesson from his active 
benevolence. I could, however, have wished to 
hear him laugh once before we parted, perhaps 
forever. He did not, to the best of my recol¬ 
lection, even smile during the whole period that 
we were in company. I am afraid that a light- 


54 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 


some disposition and a relish for humor are not 
so common in those whose benevolence takes 
an active turn as in people of sentiment, who 
are always ready with their tears and abound¬ 
ing in passionate expressions of sympathy. 
Working philanthropy is a practical specialty, 
requiring not a mere impulse, but a talent, with 
its peculiar sagacity for finding its objects, a 
tact for selecting its agencies, an organizing and 
arranging faculty, a steady set of nerves, and a 
constitution such as Sallust describes in Cati¬ 
line, patient of cold, of hunger, and of watch¬ 
ing. Philanthropists are commonly grave, oc¬ 
casionally grim, and not very rarely morose. 
Their expansive social force is imprisoned as a 
working power, to show itself only through its 
legitimate pistons and cranks. The tighter the 
boiler, the less it whistles and sings at its work. 
When Dr. Waterhouse, in 1T80, travelled with 
Howard, on his tour among the Dutch prisons 
and hospitals, he found his temper and manners 
very different from what would have been ex¬ 
pected. 

My benevolent companion having already 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN." 55 


made a preliminary exploration of the hospitals 
of the place, before sharing my bed with him, 
as above mentioned, I joined him in a second 
tour through them. The authorities of Middle- 
town are evidently leagued with the surgeons of 
that place, for such a break-neck succession of 
pitfalls and chasms I have never seen in the 
streets of a civilized town. It was getting late 
in the evening when we began our rounds. 
The principal collections of the wounded were 
in the churches. Boards were laid over the 
tops of the pews, on these some straw was 
spread, and on this the wounded lay, with little 
or no covering other than such scanty clothes 
as they had on. There were wounds of all 
degrees of severity, but I heard no groans or 
murmurs. Most of the sufferers were hurt in 
the limbs, some had undergone amputation, and 
all had, I presume, received such attention as 
was required. Still, it was but a rough and 
dreary kind of comfort that the extemporized 
hospitals suggested. I could not help thinking 
the patients must be cold ; but they were used 
to camp life, and did not complain. The men 


56 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


who watched were not of the soft-handed varie¬ 
ty of the race. One of them was smoking his 
pipe as he went from bed to bed. I saw one 
poor fellow who had been shot through the 
breast; his breathing was labored, and he was 
tossing, anxious and restless. The men were 
debating about the opiate he was to take, and I 
was thankful that I happened there at the right 
moment to see that he was well narcotized for 
the night. Was it possible that my Captain 
could be lying on the straw in one of these 
places ? Certainly possible, but not probable ; 
but as the lantern was held over each bed, it 
was with a kind of thrill that I looked upon the 
features it illuminated. Many times as I went 
from hospital to hospital in my wanderings, I 
started as some faint resemblance — the shade 
of a young man’s hair, the outline of his half- 
turned face — recalled the presence I was in 
search of. The face would turn towards me, 
and the momentary illusion would pass away, 
but still the fancy clung to me. There was no 
figure huddled up on its rude couch, none 
stretched at the roadside, none toiling languidly 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN." 57 


along the dusty pike, none passing in car or in 
ambulance, that I did not scrutinize, as if it 
might be that for which I was making my pil¬ 
grimage to the battle-field. 

“ There are two wounded Secesh,” said my 
companion. I walked to the bedside of the 
first, who was an officer, a lieutenant, if I re¬ 
member right, from North Carolina. He was 
of good family, son of a judge in one of the 
higher courts of his State, educated, pleasant, 
gentle, intelligent. One moment’s intercourse 
with such an enemy, lying helpless and wound¬ 
ed among strangers, takes away all personal bit¬ 
terness towards those with whom we or our 
children have been but a few hours before in 
deadly strife. The basest lie which the mur¬ 
derous contrivers of this Rebellion have told is 
that which tries to make out a difference of 
race in the men of the North and South. It 
would be worth a year of battles to abolish this 
delusion, though the great sponge of war that 
wiped it out were moistened with the best blood 
of the land. My Rebel was of slight, scholas¬ 
tic habit, and spoke as one accustomed to tread 


58 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

carefully among the parts of speech. It made 
my heart ache to see him, a man finished in the 
humanities and Christian culture, whom the sin 
of his forefathers and the crime of his rulers had 
set in barbarous conflict against others of like 
training with his own, — a man who, but for 
the curse which our generation is called on to 
expiate, would have taken his part in the be¬ 
neficent task of shaping the intelligence and 
lifting the moral standard of a peaceful and 
united people. 

On Sunday morning, the twenty-first, having 
engaged James Grayden and his team, I set 
out with the Chaplain and the Philanthropist 
for Keedysville. Our track lay through the 
South-Mountain Gap, and led us first to the 
town of Boonsborough, where, it will be re¬ 
membered, Colonel Dwight had been brought 
after the battle. We saw the positions occupied 
in the Battle of South Mountain, and many traces 
of the conflict. In one situation a group of young 
trees was marked with shot, hardly one having 
escaped. As we walked by the side of the wagon, 
the Philanthropist left us for a while and climbed 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 59 


a hill, where, along the line of a fence, he found 
traces of the most desperate fighting. A ride of 
some three hours brought us to Boonsborough, 
where I roused the unfortunate army-surgeon 
who had charge of the hospitals, and who was 
trying to get a little sleep after his fatigues and 
watchings. He bore this cross very creditably, 
and helped me to explore all places where my 
soldier might be lying among the crowds of 
wounded. After the useless search, I resumed 
my journey, fortified with a note of introduction 
to Dr. Letterman ; also with a bale of oakum 
which I was to carry to that gentleman, this 
substance being employed as a substitute for lint. 
We were obliged also to procure a pass to 
Keedysville from the Provost-Marshal of Boons¬ 
borough. As we came near the place, we 
learned that General McClellan’s head-quarters 
had been removed from this village some miles 
farther to the front. 

On entering the small settlement of Keedys¬ 
ville, a familiar face and figure blocked the way, 
like one of Bunyan’s giants. The tall form and 
benevolent countenance, set off by long, flowing 


60 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


hair, belonged to the excellent Mayor Frank B. 
Fay, of Chelsea, who, like my Philanthropist, 
only still more promptly, had come to succor 
the wounded of the great battle. It was wonder¬ 
ful to see how his single personality pervaded 
this torpid little village ; he seemed to be the 
centre of all its activities. All my questions he 
answered clearly and decisively, as one who 
knew everything that was going on in the place. 
But the one question I had come five hundred 
miles to ask, — Where is Captain H. ? — he could 
not answer. There were some thousands of 
wounded in the place, he told me, scattered 
about everywhere. It would be a long job to 
hunt up my Captain ; the only way would be to 
go to every house and ask for him. Just then a 
medical officer came up. 

“ Do you know anything of Captain H., of the 
Massachusetts Twentieth ? ” 

“ 0 yes ; he is staying in that house. I saw 
him there, doing very well.” 

A chorus of hallelujahs arose in my soul, but 
I kept them to myself. Now, then, for our twice- 
wounded volunteer, our young centurion whose 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 61 


double-barred shoulder-straps we have never yet 
looked upon. Let us observe the proprieties, 
however ; no swelling upward of the mother, — 
no hysterica passio , — we do not like scenes. A 
calm salutation, — then swallow and hold hard. 
That is about the programme. 

A cottage of squared logs, filled in with plaster, 
and whitewashed. A little yard before it, with 
a gate swinging. The door of the cottage ajar, — 
no one visible as yet. I push open the door and 
enter. An old woman, Margaret Kitzmuller her 
name proves to be, is the first person I see. 

“ Captain H. here ? ” 

“ O no, Sir, — left yesterday morning for 
Hagerstown, — in a milk-cart.” 

The Kitzmuller is a beady-eyed, cheery-look- 
ing ancient woman, answers questions with a 
rising inflection, and gives a good account of the 
Captain, who got into the vehicle without assist¬ 
ance, and was in excellent spirits. Of course he 
had struck for Hagerstown as the terminus of 
the Cumberland Valley Railroad, and was on 
his way to Philadelphia, via, Chambersburg and 
Harrisburg, if he were not already in the hos- 


62 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 


pi table home of Walnut Street, where his 
friends were expecting him. 

I might follow on his track or return upon my 
own; the distance was the same to Philadelphia 
through Harrisburg as through Baltimore. But 
it was very difficult, Mr. Fay told me, to procure 
any kind of conveyance to Hagerstown ; and, on 
the other hand, I had James Gray den and his 
wagon to carry me back to Frederick. It was 
not likely that I should overtake the object of 
my pursuit with nearly thirty-six hours start, 
even if I could procure a conveyance that day. 
In the mean time James was getting impatient 
to be on his return, according to the direction 
of his employers. So I decided to go back with 
him. 

But there was the great battle-field only about 
three miles from Keedysville, and it was impos¬ 
sible to go, without seeing that. James Gray- 
den’s directions were peremptory, but it was a 
case for the higher law. I must make a good 
offer for an extra couple of hours, such as would 
satisfy the owners of the wagon, and enforce it 
by a personal motive. I did this handsomely, 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 63 


and succeeded without difficulty. To add bril¬ 
liancy to my enterprise, I invited the Chaplain 
and the Philanthropist to take a free passage 
with me. 

We followed the road through the village for 
a space, then turned off to the right, and wan¬ 
dered somewhat vaguely, for want of precise 
directions, over the hills. Inquiring as we went, 
we forded a wide creek in which soldiers were 
washing their clothes, the name of which we did 
not then know, but which must have been the 
Antietam. At one point we met a party, women 
among them, bringing off various trophies they 
had picked up on the battle-field. Still wander¬ 
ing along, we w r ere at last pointed to a hill in 
the distance, a part of the summit of which was 
covered with Indian-corn. There, we were told, 
some of the fiercest fighting of the day had been 
done. The fences were taken down so as to 
make a passage across the fields, and the tracks 
worn within the last few days looked like old 
roads. We passed a fresh grave under a tree 
near the road. A board was nailed to the 
tree, bearing the name, as well as I could make 


64 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


it out, of Gardiner, of a New-Hampshire regi¬ 
ment. 

On coming near the brow of the hill, we met 
a party carrying picks and spades. “ How 
many ? ” “ Only one.” The dead were nearly 
all buried, then, in this region of the field of 
strife. We stopped the wagon, and, getting out, 
began to look around us. Hard by was a large 
pile of muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which 
had been picked up, and were guarded for the 
Government. A long ridge of fresh gravel rose 
before us. A board stuck up in front of it bore 
this inscription, the first part of which was, I 
believe, not correct: “ The Rebel General An¬ 
derson and 80 Rebels are buried in this hole.” 
Other smaller ridges were marked with the 
number of dead lying under them. The whole 
ground was strewed with fragments of cloth¬ 
ing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, car¬ 
tridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions 
of bread and meat. I saw two soldiers’ caps that 
looked as though their owners had been shot 
through the head. In several places I noticed 
dark red patches where a pool of blood had 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” G5 


curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured 
his life out on the sod. I then wandered about 
in the cornfield. It surprised me to notice, that, 
though there was every mark of hard fighting 
having taken place here, the Indian-corn was 
not generally trodden down. One of our corn¬ 
fields is a kind of forest, and even when fighting, 
men avoid the tall stalks as if they were trees. 
At the edge of this cornfield lay a gray horse, 
said to have belonged to a Rebel colonel, who 
was killed near the same place. Not far off 
were two dead artillery horses in their harness. 
Another had been attended to by a burying- 
party, who had thrown some earth over him; 
but his last bed-clothes were too short, and his 
legs stuck out stark and stiff from beneath the 
gravel coverlet. It was a great pity that we had 
no intelligent guide to explain to us the position 
of that portion of the tw'o armies which fought 
over this ground. There was a shallow trench 
before we came to the cornfield, too narrow for 
a road, as I should think, too elevated for a 
water-course, and which seemed to have been 
used as a rifle-pit. At any rate, there had been 


G6 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


hard fighting in and about it. This and the 
cornfield may serve to identify the part of the 
ground we visited, if any who fought there 
should ever look over this paper. The opposing 
tides of battle must have blended their waves at 
this point, for portions of gray uniform were 
mingled with the “ garments rolled in blood ” 
torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers. 
I picked up a Rebel canteen, and one of our 
own, — but there was something repulsive about 
the trodden and stained relics of the stale battle¬ 
field. It was like the table of some hideous orgy 
left uncleared, and one turned away disgusted 
from its broken fragments and muddy heel-taps. 
A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a 
soldier’s belt, served well enough for mementos 
of my visit, with a letter which I picked up, 
directed to Richmond, Virginia, its seal un¬ 
broken. “ N. C. Cleveland County. E. Wright 
to J. Wright.” On the other side, “ A few lines 
from W. L. Vaughn,” who has just been writing 
for the wife to her husband, and continues on 
his own account. The postscript, “ tell John 
that nancy’s folks are all well and has a verry 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 67 


good Little Crop of corn a growing.” I wonder, 
if, by one of those strange chances of which I 
have seen so many, this number or leaf of the 
“ Atlantic ” will not sooner or later find its way 
to Cleveland County, North Carolina, and E. 
Wright, widow of James Wright, and Nancy’s 
folks, get from these sentences the last glimpse 
of husband and friend as he threw up his arms 
and fell in the bloody cornfield of Antietam ? I 
will keep this stained letter for them until peace 
comes back, if it comes in my time, and my 
pleasant North Carolina Rebel of the Middle- 
town Hospital will, perhaps, look these poor 
people up, and tell them where to send for it. 

On the battle-field I parted with my two com¬ 
panions, the Chaplain and the Philanthropist. 
They were going to the front, the one to find 
his regiment, the other to look for those who 
needed his assistance. We exchanged cards and 
farewells, I mounted the wagon, the horses’ 
heads were turned homewards, my two com¬ 
panions went their way, and I saw them no 
more. On my way back, I fell into talk with 
James Grayden. Born in England, Lancashire; 


68 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.** 


in this country since he was four years old. 
Had nothing to care for but an old mother ; 
did n’t know what he should do if he lost her. 
Though so long in this country, he had all the 
simplicity and childlike light-heartedness which 
belong to the Old World’s people. He laughed 
at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great 
white English teeth; he took a joke without 
retorting by an impertinence ; he had a very 
limited curiosity about all that was going on ; 
he had small store of information; he lived 
chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me. His quiet 
animal nature acted as a pleasing anodyne to my 
recurring fits of anxiety, and I liked his frequent 
“ ’Deed I don’t know, Sir,” better than I have 
sometimes relished the large discourse of pro¬ 
fessors and other very wise men. 

I have not much to say of the road which we 
were travelling for the second time. Reaching 
Middletown, my first call was on the wounded 
Colonel and his lady. She gave me a most 
touching account of all the suffering he had 
gone through with his shattered limb before he 
succeeded in finding a shelter showing the ter- 

O O 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 69 


rible want of proper means of transportation of 
the wounded after the battle.* It occurred to 
me, while at this house, that I was more or less 
famished, and for the first time in my life I 
begged for a meal, which the kind family with 
whom the Colonel was staying most graciously 
furnished me. 

After tea, there came in a stout army-surgeon, 
a Highlander by birth, educated in Edinburgh, 
with whom I had pleasant, not unstimulating 
talk. He had been brought very close to that 
immane and nefandous Burke-and-Hare business 
which made the blood of civilization run cold in 
the year 1828, and told me, in a very calm way, 
with an occasional pinch from the mull, to 
refresh his memory, some of the details of those 
frightful murders, never rivalled in horror until 
the wretch Dumollard, who kept a private cem¬ 
etery for his victims, was dragged into the light 
of day. He had a good deal to say, too, about 
the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, 
and the famous preparations, mercurial and the 
rest, which I remember well having seen there, 
— the “ sudabit multum ,” and others, — also of 


70 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

our New York Professor Carnochan’s handi¬ 
work, a specimen of which I once admired at 
the New York College. But the doctor was 
not in a happy frame of mind, and seemed will¬ 
ing to forget the present in the past: things 
went wrong, somehow, and the time was out 
of joint with him. 

Dr. Thompson, kind, cheerful, companiona¬ 
ble, offered me half his own wide bed, in the 
house of Dr. Baer, for my second night in Mid¬ 
dletown. Here I lay awake again another night. 
Close to the house stood an ambulance in which 
was a wounded Hebei officer, attended by one 
of their own surgeons. He was calling out 
in a loud voice, all night long, as it seemed to 
me, “Doctor! Doctor! Driver! Water!” in 
loud, complaining tones, I have no doubt of real 
suffering, but in strange contrast with the silent 
patience which was the almost universal rule. 

The courteous Dr. Thompson will let me 
tell here an odd coincidence, trivial, but having 
its interest as one of a series. The Doctor and 
myself lay in the bed, and a lieutenant, a friend 
of his, slept on the sofa. At night, I placed my 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 71 


match-box, a Scotch one, of the Macpherson- 
plaid pattern, which I bought years ago, on the 
bureau, just where I could put my hand upon it. 
I was the last of the three to rise in the morn¬ 
ing, and on looking for my pretty match-box, I 
found it was gone. This was rather awkward, 
— not on account of the loss, but of the un¬ 
avoidable fact that one of my fellow-lodgers 
must have taken it. I must try to find out what 
it meant. 

“ By the way, Doctor, have you seen any¬ 
thing of a little plaid-pattern match-box ? ” 

The Doctor put his hand to his pocket, and, 
to his own huge surprise and my great gratifi¬ 
cation, pulled out two match-boxes exactly alike, 
both printed with the Macpherson plaid. One 
was his, the other mine, which he had seen lying 
round, and naturally took for his own, thrusting 
it into his pocket, where it found its twin-brother 
from the same workshop. In memory of which 
event, we exchanged boxes, like two Homeric 
heroes. 

This curious coincidence illustrates well 
enough some supposed cases of plagiarism , of 


72 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 


which I will mention one where my name fig¬ 
ured. When a little poem called “ The Two 
Streams ” was first printed, a writer in the 
New York “Evening Post” virtually accused 
the author of it of borrowing the thought from 
a baccalaureate sermon of President Hopkins, 
of Williamstown, and printed a quotation from 
that discourse, which, as I thought, a thief or 
catchpoll might well consider as establishing a 
fair presumption that it was so borrowed. I 
was at the same time wholly unconscious of 
ever having met with the discourse or the sen¬ 
tence which the verses were most like, nor do I 
believe I ever had seen or heard either. Some 
time after this, happening to meet my eloquent 
cousin, Wendell Phillips, I mentioned the fact to 
him, and he told me that he had once used the 
special image said to be borrowed, in a discourse 
delivered at Williamstown. On relating this to 
my friend Mr. Buchanan Read, he informed me 
that he, too, had used the image, — perhaps 
referring to his poem called “ The Twins.” 
He thought Tennyson had used it also. The 
parting of the streams on the Alps is poetically 


MY HUNT AFTER « THE CAPTAIN.” 73 

elaborated in a passage attributed to “ M. 
Loisne,” printed in the “ Boston Evening Tran¬ 
script ” for October 23d, 1859. Captain, after¬ 
wards Sir Francis Head, speaks of the showers 
parting on the Cordilleras, one portion going to 
the Atlantic, one to the Pacific. I found the 
image running loose in my mind, without a 
halter. It suggested itself as an illustration of 
the will, and I worked the poem out by the aid 
of Mitchell’s School Atlas. — The spores of a 
great many ideas are floating about in the at¬ 
mosphere. We no more know where all the 
growths of our mind came from, than where the 
lichens which eat the names off from the grave¬ 
stones borrowed the germs that gave them birth. 
The two match-boxes were just alike, but nei¬ 
ther was a plagiarism. 

In the morning I took to the same wagon 
once more, but, instead of James Grayden, I 
was to have for my driver a young man who 
spelt his name “ Phillip Ottenheimer,” and 
whose features at once showed him to be an 
Israelite. I found him agreeable enough, and 
disposed to talk. So I asked him many ques- 


4 


74 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

tions about his religion, and got some answers 
that sound strangely in Christian ears. He 
was from Wittenberg, and had been educated 
in strict Jewish fashion. From his childhood 
he had read Hebrew, but was not much of a 
scholar otherwise. A young person of his race 
lost caste utterly by marrying a Christian. 
The Founder of our religion was considered 
by the Israelites to have been “ a right smart 
man, and a great doctor.” But the horror with 
which the reading of the New Testament by 
any young person of their faith would be re¬ 
garded was as great, I judged by his language, 
as that of one of our straitest sectaries would 
be, if he found his son or daughter perusing 
the “Age of Reason.” 

In approaching Frederick, the singular beauty 
of its clustered spires struck me very much, 
so that I was not surprised to find “ Fair-View ” 
laid down about this point on a railroad-map. 
I wish some wandering photographer would 
take a picture of the place, a stereoscopic one, 
if possible, to show how gracefully, how charm¬ 
ingly, its group of steeples nestles among the 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 75 


Maryland hills. The town had a poetical look 
from a distance, as if seers and dreamers might 
dwell there. The first sign I read, on enter¬ 
ing its long street, might perhaps be consid¬ 
ered as confirming my remote impression. It 
bore these words: “ Miss Ogle, Past, Present, 
and Future.” On arriving, I visited Lieu¬ 
tenant Abbott, and the attenuated unhappy gen¬ 
tleman, his neighbor, sharing between them as 
my parting gift what I had left of the balsam 
known to the Pharmacopoeia as Spiritus Vini 
Gallici . I took advantage of General Shriv- 
er’s always open door to write a letter home, 
but had not time to partake of his offered hospi¬ 
tality. The railroad-bridge over the Monocacy 
had been rebuilt since I passed through Fred¬ 
erick, and we trundled along over the track 
toward Baltimore. 

It was a disappointment, on reaching the 
Eutaw House, where I had ordered all com¬ 
munications to be addressed, to find no tele¬ 
graphic message from Philadelphia or Boston, 
stating that Captain H. had arrived at the 
former place, “ wound doing well in good spir- 


76 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPT AINA 


its expects to leave soon for Boston.” After 
all, it was no great matter ; the Captain was, 
no doubt, snugly lodged before this in the 
house called Beautiful, a t * * * * Walnut 
Street, where that “ grave and beautiful dam¬ 
sel named Discretion” had already welcomed 
him, smiling, though “ the water stood in her 
eyes,” and had “ called out Prudence, Piety, 
and Charity, who, after a little more discourse 
with him, had him into the family.” 

The friends I had met at the Eutaw House 
had all gone but one, the lady of an officer 
from Boston, who was most amiable and agree¬ 
able, and whose benevolence, as I afterwards 
learned, soon reached the invalids I had left suf¬ 
fering at Frederick. General Wool still walked 
the corridors, inexpansive, with Fort McHenry 
on his shoulders, and Baltimore in his breeches- 
pocket, and his courteous aid again pressed 
upon me his kind offices. About the doors 
of the hotel the news-boys cried the papers 
in plaintive, wailing tones, as different from 
the sharp accents of their Boston counterparts 
as a sigh from the southwest is from a north- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 77 


eastern breeze. To understand what they said 
was, of course, impossible to any but an edu¬ 
cated ear, and if I made out “Stoarr” and 
“ Clipp’rr,” it was because I knew before¬ 
hand what must be the burden of their adver¬ 
tising coranach. 

I set out for Philadelphia on the morrow, 
Tuesday the twenty-third, there beyond ques¬ 
tion to meet my Captain, once more united 
to his brave wounded companions under that 
roof which covers a household of as noble 
hearts as ever throbbed with human sympa¬ 
thies. Back River, Bush River, Gunpowder 
Creek, — lives there the man with soul so dead 
that his memory has cerements to wrap up 
these senseless names in the same envelopes 
with their meaningless localities ? But the 
Susquehanna, — the broad, the beautiful, the 
historical, the poetical Susquehanna, — the river 
of Wyoming and of Gertrude, dividing the 
shores where 

“ aye those sunny mountains half-way down 
Would echo flageolet from some romantic town,” — 

did not my heart renew its allegiance to the 


78 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

poet who has made it lovely to the imagina¬ 
tion as well as to the eye, and so identified 
his fame with the noble stream that it “ rolls 
mingling with his fame forever ” ? The prosaic 
traveller perhaps remembers it better from the 
fact that a great sea-monster, in the shape 
of a steamboat, takes him, sitting in the car, 
on its back, and swims across with him like 
Arion’s dolphin, — also that mercenary men 
on board offer him canvas-backs in the season, 
and ducks of lower degree at other periods. 

At Philadelphia again at last! Drive fast, 
O colored man and brother, to the house 
called Beautiful, where my Captain lies sore 
wounded, waiting for the sound of the chariot- 
wheels which bring to his bedside the face 
and the voice nearer than any save one to 
his heart in this his hour of pain and weak¬ 
ness ! Up a long street with white shutters 
and white steps to all the houses. Off at right 
angles into another long street with white shut¬ 
ters and white steps to all the houses. Off 
again at another right angle into still another 
long street with white shutters and white steps 


AY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 79 


to all the houses. The natives of this city- 
pretend to know one street from another by 
some individual differences of aspect; but the 
best way for a stranger to distinguish the 
streets he has been in from others is to make 
a cross or other mark on the white shut¬ 
ters. 

This corner-house is the one. Ring softly, 
— for the Lieutenant-Colonel lies there with 
a dreadfully wounded arm, and two sons of 
the family, one wounded like the Colonel, one 
fighting with death in the fog of a typhoid 
fever, will start with fresh pangs at the least 
sound you can make. I entered the house, 
but no cheerful smile met me. The sufferers 
were each of them thought to be in a critical 
condition. The fourth bed, waiting its tenant 
day after day, was still empty. Not a word 
from my Captain. 

Then, foolish, fond body that I was, my 
heart sank within me. Had he been taken 
ill on the road, perhaps been attacked with 
those formidable symptoms which sometimes 
come on suddenly after wounds that seemed to 


80 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


be doing well enough, and was his life ebbing 
away in some lonely cottage, nay, in some 
cold barn or shed, or at the wayside, unknown, 
uncared for? Somewhere between Philadel¬ 
phia and Hagerstown, if not at the latter town, 
he must be, at any rate. I must sweep the 
hundred and eighty miles between these places 
as one would sweep a chamber where a precious 
pearl had been dropped. I must have a com¬ 
panion in my search, partly to help me look 
about, and partly because I was getting ner¬ 
vous and felt lonely. Charley said he would 
go with me, — Charley, my Captain’s beloved 
friend, gentle, but full of spirit and liveliness, 
cultivated, social, affectionate, a good talker, 
a most agreeable letter-writer, observing, with 
large relish of life, and keen sense of humor. 
He was not well enough to go, some of the 
timid ones said; but he answered by packing 
his carpet-bag, and in an hour or two we were 
on the Pennsylvania Central Railroad in full 
blast for Harrisburg. 

I should have been a forlorn creature but for 
the presence of my companion. In his delight- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 81 


ful company I half forgot my anxieties, which, 
exaggerated as they may seem now, were not 
unnatural after what I had seen of the confusion 
and distress that had followed the great battle, 
nay, which seem almost justified by the recent 
statement that “ high officers ” were buried after 
that battle whose names were never ascertained. 
I noticed little matters, as usual. The road was 
filled in between the rails with cracked stones, 
such as are used for Macadamizing streets. 
They keep the dust down, I suppose, for I 
could not think of any other use for them. By 
and by the glorious valley which stretches along 
through Chester and Lancaster Counties opened 
upon us. Much as I had heard of the fertile 
regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the 
uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me. 
The grazing pastures were so green, the fields 
were under such perfect culture, the cattle 
looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, 
the barns so ample, the fences so well kept, that 
I did not wonder, when I was told that this 
region was called the England of Pennsylvania. 
The people whom we saw were, like the cattle, 

4* F 


82 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


well nourished ; the young women looked round 
and wholesome. 

“Grass makes girls” I said to my companion, 
and left him to work out my Orphic saying, 
thinking to myself, that, as guano makes grass, 
it was a legitimate conclusion that Ichaboe must 
be a nursery of female loveliness. 

As the train stopped at the different stations, 
I inquired at each if they had any wounded 
officers. None as yet; the red rays of the 
battle-field had not streamed off so far as this. 
Evening found us in the cars; they lighted 
candles in spring-candle-sticks; odd enough I 
thought it in the land of oil-wells and unmeas¬ 
ured floods of kerosene. Some fellows turned 
up the back of a seat so as to make it horizontal, 
and began gambling, or pretending to gamble; 
it looked as if they were trying to pluck a 
young countryman; but appearances are decep¬ 
tive, and no deeper stake than “ drinks for the 
crowd” seemed at last to be involved. But 
remembering that murder has tried of late years 
to establish itself as an institution in the cars, I 
was less tolerant of the doings of these “ sports- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 83 


men ” who tried to turn our public conveyance 
into a travelling Frascati. They acted as if 
they were used to it, and nobody seemed to pay 
much attention to their manoeuvres. 

We arrived at Harrisburg in the course of the 
evening, and attempted to find our way to the 
Jones House, to which we had been commend¬ 
ed. By some mistake, intentional on the part 
of somebody, as it may have been, or purely 
accidental, we w T ent to the Herr House instead. 
I entered my name in the book, with that of 
my companion. A plain, middle-aged man 
stepped up, read it to himself in low tones, and 
coupled to it a literary title by which I have 
been sometimes known. He proved to be a 
graduate of Brown University, and had heard 
a certain Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered there 
a good many years ago. I remembered it, too; 
Professor Goddard, whose sudden and singular 
death left such lasting regret, was the Orator. 
I recollect that while I was speaking a drum 
went by the church, and how I was disgusted to 
see all the heads near the window's thrust out 
of them, as if the building were on fire. Cedat 


84 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

armis toga. The clerk in the office, a mild, 
pensive, unassuming young man, was very po¬ 
lite in his manners, and did all he could to make 
us comfortable. He was of a literary turn, and 
knew one of his guests in his character of au¬ 
thor. At tea, a mild old gentleman, with white 
hair and beard, sat next us. He, too, had come 
hunting after his son, a lieutenant in a Pennsyl¬ 
vania regiment. Of these, father and son, more 
presently. 

After tea we went to look up Dr. Wilson, 
chief medical officer of the hospitals in the place, 
who was staying at the Brady House. A mag¬ 
nificent old toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue, 
and stern of aspect, as all grog-dispensers must 
be, accustomed as they are to dive through the 
features of men to the bottom of their souls and 
pockets to see whether they are solvent to the 
amount of sixpence, answered my question by a 
wave of one hand, the other being engaged in 
carrying a dram to his lips. His superb indif¬ 
ference gratified my artistic feeling more than it 
wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything 
really superior in its line claims my homage, 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 85 

and this man was the ideal bar-tender, above 
all vulgar passions, untouched by commonplace 
sympathies, himself a lover of the liquid happi¬ 
ness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn 
of all those lesser felicities conferred by love or 
fame or wealth or any of the roundabout agen¬ 
cies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap, all- 
powerful substitute. 

Dr. Wilson was in bed, though it was early 
in the evening, not having slept for I don’t 
know how many nights. 

“ Take my card up to him, if you please.” 

“ This way, Sir.” 

A man who has not slept for a fortnight or so 
is not expected to be as affable, when attacked 
in his bed, as a French Princess of old time at 
her morning receptions. Dr. Wilson turned 
toward me, as I entered, without effusion, but 
without rudeness. His thick, dark moustache 
was chopped off square at the lower edge of the 
upper lip, which implied a decisive, if not a 
peremptory, style of character. 

I am Doctor So-and-So, of Hubtown, looking 
after my wounded son. (I gave my name and 
said Boston , of course, in reality.) 


86 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.' 


Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked 
up in my face, his features growing cordial. 
Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly 
excused his reception of me. The day before* 
as he told me, he had dismissed from the service 
a medical man hailing from ********, Pennsyl¬ 
vania, bearing my last name, preceded by the 
same two initials; and he supposed, when my 
card came up, it was this individual who was 
disturbing his slumbers. The coincidence was 
so unlikely a priori, unless some forlorn parent 
without antecedents had named a child after me, 
that I could not help cross-questioning the Doc¬ 
tor, who assured me deliberately that the fact 
was just as he had said, even to the somewhat 
unusual initials. Dr. Wilson very kindly fur¬ 
nished me all the information in his power, gave 
me directions for telegraphing to Chambersburg, 
and showed every disposition to serve me. 

On returning to the Herr House, we found 
the mild, white-haired old gentleman in a very 
happy state. He had just discovered his son, in 
a comfortable condition, at the United States 
Hotel. He thought that he could probably give 


MY HUNT AFTER « THE CAPTAIN ” 87 


as some information which would prove inter¬ 
esting. To the United States Hotel we re¬ 
paired, then, in company with our kind-hearted 
old friend, who evidently wanted to see me as 
happy as himself. He went up-stairs to his 
son’s chamber, and presently came down to 
conduct us there. 

Lieutenant P-, of the Pennsylvania 

-th, was a very fresh, bright-looking young 

man, lying in bed from the effects of a recent 
injury received in action. A grape-shot, after 
passing through a post and a board, had struck 
him in the hip, bruising, but not penetrating or 
breaking. He had good news for me. 

That very afternoon, a party of wounded 
officers had passed through Harrisburg, going 
East. He had conversed in the bar-room of 
this hotel with one of them, who was wounded 
about the shoulder, (it might be the lower part 
of the neck,) and had his arm in a sling. He 
belonged to the Twentieth Massachusetts; the 
Lieutenant saw that he was a Captain, by the 
two bars on his shoulder-strap. His name was 
my family-name; he was tall and youthful, like 




88 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

my Captain. At four o’clock he left in the 
train for Philadelphia. Closely questioned, the 
Lieutenant’s evidence was as round, complete, 
and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crys¬ 
tal. 

Te Deum laudamus ! The Lord’s name he 
praised ! The dead pain in the semilunar gang¬ 
lion (which I must remind my reader is a kind 
of stupid, unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of 
the stomach, common to man and beast, which 
aches in the supreme moments of life, as when 
the dam loses her young ones, or the wdld horse 
is lassoed) stopped short. There was a feeling 
as if I had slipped off a tight boot, or cut a 
strangling garter, — only it was all over my 
system. What more could I ask to assure me 
of the Captain’s safety ? As soon as the tele¬ 
graph-office opens to-morrow morning we will 
send a message to our friends in Philadelphia, 
and get a reply, doubtless, which will settle 
the whole matter. 

The hopeful morrow dawned at last, and the 
message was sent accordingly. In due time, the 
following reply was received : — 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 89 


“ Phil Sept 24 I think the report you have 
heard that W [the Captain] has gone East must 
be an error we have not seen or heard of him 
here M L H ” 

De profundis clamavi ! He could not have 
passed through Philadelphia without visiting the 
house called Beautiful, where he had been so 
tenderly cared for after his wound at Ball’s 
Bluff, and where those whom he loved were 
lying in grave peril of life or limb. Yet he did 
pass through Harrisburg, going East, going to 
Philadelphia, on his way home. Ah, this is it! 
He must have taken the late night-train from 
Philadelphia for New York, in his impatience to 
reach home. There is such a train, not down in 
the guide-book, but we were assured of the fact 
at the Harrisburg depot. By and by came the 
reply from Dr. Wilson’s telegraphic message: 
nothing had been heard of the Captain at Cham- 
bersburg. Still later, another message came 
from our Philadelphia friend, saying that he was 

seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. K-, 

a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown. Now 


90 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN .” 

this could not be true, for he did not leave 
Keedysville until Saturday; but the name of 
the lady furnished a clew by which we could 
probably track him. A telegram was at once 

sent to Mrs. K-, asking information. It was 

transmitted immediately, but when the answer 
would be received was uncertain, as the Gov¬ 
ernment almost monopolized the line. I was, 
on the whole, so well satisfied that the Captain 
had gone East, that, unless something were 
heard to the contrary, I proposed following him 
in the late train leaving a little after midnight 
for Philadelphia. 

This same morning we visited several of the 
temporary hospitals, churches and school-houses, 
where the wounded were lying. In one of 
these, after looking round as usual, I asked 
aloud, “ Any Massachusetts men here ? ” Two 
bright faces lifted themselves from their pillows 
and welcomed me by name. The one nearest 
me was private John B. Noyes, of Company B, 
Massachusetts Thirteenth, son of my old college 
class-tutor, now the reverend and learned Pro¬ 
fessor of Hebrew, etc., in Harvard University. 



MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 91 


Ilis neighbor was Corporal Armstrong of the 
same Company. Both were slightly wounded, 
doing well. I learned then and since from Mr. 
Noyes that they and their comrades were com¬ 
pletely overwhelmed by the attentions of the 
good people of Harrisburg, — that the ladies 
brought them fruits and flowers, and smiles, 
better than either, — and that the little boys of 
the place were almost fighting for the privilege 
of doing their errands. I am afraid there will 
be a good many hearts pierced in this war that 
will have no bullet-mark to show. 

There were some heavy hours to get rid of, 
and we thought a visit to Camp Curtin might 
lighten some of them. A rickety wagon carried 
us to the camp, in company with a young wo¬ 
man from Troy, who had a basket of good things 
with her for a sick brother. “ Poor boy! he 
will be sure to die,” she said. The rustic sen¬ 
tries uncrossed their muskets and let us in. 
The camp was on a fair plain, girdled with hills, 
spacious, well kept apparently, but did not pre¬ 
sent any peculiar attraction for us. The visit 
would have been a dull one, had we not hap- 


92 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

pened to get sight of a singular-looking set of 
human beings in the distance. They were clad 
in stuff of different hues, gray and brown be¬ 
ing the leading shades, but both subdued by a 
neutral tint, such as is wont to harmonize the 
variegated apparel of travel-stained vagabonds. 
They looked slouchy, listless, torpid, — an ill- 
conditioned crew, at first sight, made up of such 
fellows as an old woman would drive away from 
her hen-roost with a broomstick. Yet these 
were estrays from the fiery army which has 
given our generals so much trouble, — “ Secesh 
prisoners,” as a bystander told us. A talk with 
them might be profitable and entertaining. But 
they were tabooed to the common visitor, and it 
was necessary to get inside of the line which sep¬ 
arated us from them. 

A solid, square captain was standing near by, 
to whom we were referred. Look a man calmly 
through the very centre of his pupils and ask 
him for anything with a tone implying entire 
conviction that he will grant it, and he will very 
commonly consent to the thing asked, were it to 
commit hari-kari. The Captain acceded to my 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 93 


postulate, and accepted my friend as a corollary. 
As one string of my own ancestors was of Bata¬ 
vian origin, I may be permitted to say that my 
new friend was of the Dutch type, like the 
Amsterdam galiots, broad in the beam, capa¬ 
cious in the hold, and calculated to carry a 
heavy cargo rather than to make fast time. He 
must have been in politics at some time or other, 
for he made orations to all the “ Secesh,” in 
which he explained to them that the United 
States considered and treated them like children, 
and enforced upon them the ridiculous impossi¬ 
bility of the Rebels’ attempting to do anything 
against such a power as that of the National 
Government. 

Much as his discourse edified them and en¬ 
lightened me, it interfered somewhat with my 
little plans of entering into frank and friendly 
talk with some of these poor fellows, for whom 
I could not help feeling a kind of human sym¬ 
pathy, though I am as venomous a hater of the 
Rebellion as one is like to find under the stars 
and stripes. It is fair to take a man prisoner. 
It is fair to make speeches to a man. But to 


94 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

take a man prisoner and then make speeches to 
him while in durance is not fair. 

I began a few pleasant conversations, which 
would have come to something but for the 
reason assigned. 

One old fellow had a long beard, a drooping 
eyelid, and a black clay pipe in his mouth. He 
was a Scotchman from Ayr, dour enough, and 
little disposed to be communicative, though I 
tried him with the “ Twa Briggs,” and, like all 
Scotchmen, he was a reader of “ Burrns.” He 
professed to feel no interest in the cause for 
which he was fighting, and was in the army, 
I judged, only from compulsion. There was a 
wild-haired, unsoaped boy, with pretty, foolish 
features enough, who looked as if he might be 
about seventeen, as he said he was. I give my 
questions and his answers literally. 

“ What State do you come from ? ” 

“ Georgy.” 

“ What part of Georgia ? ” 

“ Midway .” 

— [How odd that is ! My father was settled 
for seven years as pastor over the church at 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 95 

Midway, Georgia, and this youth is very prob¬ 
ably a grandson or great grandson of one of his 
parishioners.] — 

“ Where did you go to church when you 
were at home ? ” 

“ Never went inside ’f a church b’t once in 
m’ life.” 

“ What did you do before you became a 
soldier ? ” 

“ Nothin’.” 

“ What do you mean to do when you get 
back ? ” 

“ Nothin’.” 

Who could have any other feeling than pity 
for this poor human weed, this dwarfed and 
etiolated soul, doomed by neglect to an existence 
but one degree above that of the idiot ? 

With the group was a lieutenant, buttoned 
close in his gray coat, — one button gone, per¬ 
haps to make a breastpin for some fair traitorous 
bosom. A short, stocky man, undistinguishable 
from one of the “ subject race ” by any obvious 
meanderings of the sangre azul on his exposed 
surfaces. He did not say much, possibly because 


96 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN ” 

he was convinced by the statements and argu¬ 
ments of the Dutch captain. He had on strong, 
iron-heeled shoes, of English make, which he 
said cost him seventeen dollars in Richmond. 

I put the question, in a quiet, friendly way, to 
several of the prisoners, what they were fighting 
for. One answered, “ For our homes.” Two 
or three others said they did not know, and 
manifested great indifference to the whole matter, 
at which another of their number, a sturdy fel¬ 
low, took offence, and muttered opinions strongly 
derogatory to those who would not stand up for 
the cause they had been fighting for. A feeble, 
attenuated old man, who wore the Rebel uni¬ 
form, if such it could be called, stood by without 
showing any sign of intelligence. It was cutting 
very close to the bone to carve such a shred of 
humanity from the body politic to make a sol¬ 
dier of. 

We were just leaving, when a face attracted 
me, and I stopped the party. “ That is the true 
Southern type,” I said to my companion. A 
young fellow, a little over twenty, rather tall, 
slight, with a perfectly smooth, boyish cheek, 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 97 


delicate, somewhat high features, and a fine, 
almost feminine mouth, stood at the opening of 
his tent, and as we turned towards him fidgeted 
a little nervously with one hand at the loose 
canvas, while he seemed at the same time not 
unwilling to talk. He was from Mississippi, he 
said, had been at Georgetown College, and was 
so far imbued with letters that even the name of 
the literary humility before him was not new to 
his ears. Of course I found it easy to come into 
magnetic relation with him, and to ask him with¬ 
out incivility what he was fighting for. “ Because 
I like the excitement of it,” he answered. I 
know those fighters with women’s mouths and 
boys’ cheeks. One such from the circle of my 
own friends, sixteen years old, slipped away from 
his nursery, and dashed in under an assumed 
name among the red-legged Zouaves, in whose 
company he got an ornamental bullet-mark in 
one of the earliest conflicts of the war. 

“ Did you ever see a genuine Yankee ?” said 
my Philadelphia friend to the young Mississip¬ 
pi. 

“ I have shot at a good many of them,” he 
5 


a 


98 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 


replied, modestly, his woman’s mouth stirring a 
little, with a pleasant, dangerous smile. 

The Dutch captain here put his foot into the 
conversation, as his ancestors used to put theirs 
into the scale, when they were buying furs of 
the Indians by weight, — so much for the weight 
of a hand, so much for the weight of a foot. It 
deranged the balance of our intercourse ; there 
was no use in throwing a fly where a paving- 
stone had just splashed into the water, and I 
nodded a good-by to the boy-fighter, thinking 
how much pleasanter it was for my friend the 
Captain to address him with unanswerable argu¬ 
ments and crushing statements in his own tent 
than it would be to meet him upon some remote 
picket station and offer his fair proportions to 
the quick eye of a youngster who would draw a 
bead on him before he had time to say dander 
and blixum. 

We drove back to the town. No message. 
After dinner still no message. Dr. Cuyler, 
Chief Army-Hospital Inspector, is in town, they 
say. Let us hunt him up, — perhaps he can 
help us. 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 99 


We found him at the Jones House. A gentle¬ 
man of large proportions, but of lively tempera¬ 
ment, his frame knit in the North, I think, but 
ripened in Georgia, incisive, prompt, but good- 
humored, wearing his broad-brimmed, steeple- 
crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on 
one side, — a sure sign of exuberant vitality in 
a mature and dignified person like him, — busi¬ 
ness-like in his ways, and not to be interrupted 
while occupied with another, hut giving himself 
up heartily to the claimant who held him for the 
time. He was so genial, so cordial, so encourag¬ 
ing, that it seemed as if the clouds, which had 
been thick all the morning, broke away as we 
came into his presence, and the sunshine of his 
large nature filled the air all around us. He 
took the matter in hand at once, as if it were his 
own private affair. In ten minutes he had a 
second telegraphic message on its way to Mrs. 
K- at Hagerstown, sent through the Gov¬ 

ernment channel from the State Capitol, — one 
so direct and urgent that I should be sure of 
an answer to it, whatever became of the one I 
had sent in the morning. 



100 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

While this was going on, we hired a dilapi¬ 
dated barouche, driven by an odd young native, 
neither boy nor man, “ as a codling when’t is 
almost an apple,” who said weryiax very, simple 
and sincere, who smiled faintly at our pleasant¬ 
ries, always with a certain reserve of suspicion, 
and a gleam of the shrewdness that all men get 
who live in the atmosphere of horses. He drove 
us round by the Capitol grounds, white with 
tents, which were disgraced in my eyes by un- 
soldierly scrawls in huge letters, thus: The 
Seven Bloomsbury Brothers, Devil’s Hole, 
and similar inscriptions. Then to the Beacon 
Street of Harrisburg, which looks upon the Sus¬ 
quehanna instead of the Common, and shows a 
long front of handsome houses with fair gardens. 
The river is pretty nearly a mile across here, but 
very shallow now. The codling told us that a 
Rebel spy had been caught trying its fords a 
little while ago, and was now at Camp Curtin 
with a heavy ball chained to his leg, — a popu¬ 
lar story, but a lie, Dr. Wilson said. A little 
farther along we came to the barkless stump of 
the tree to which Mr. Harris, the Cecrops of 

\ 


9 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAINS 101 

the city named after him, was tied by the Indians 
for some unpleasant operation of scalping or 
roasting, when he was rescued by friendly 
savages, who paddled across the stream to save 
him. Our youngling pointed out a very respect¬ 
able-looking stone house as having been “ built 
by the Indians ” about those times. Guides 
have queer notions occasionally. 

I was at Niagara just when Dr. Rae arrived 
there with his companions and dogs and things 
from his Arctic search after the lost navigator. 

u Who are those ? ” I said to my conduc¬ 
tor. 

“ Them ? ” he answered. “ Them’s the men 
that’s been out West, out to Michig’n, aft’ Sir 
Ben Franklin 

Of the other sights of Harrisburg the Brant 
House or Hotel, or whatever it is called, seems 
most worth notice. Its fagade is imposing, with 
a row of stately columns, high above which a 
broad sign impends, like a crag over the brow of 
a lofty precipice. The lower floor only appeared 
to be open to the public. Its tessellated pave¬ 
ment and ample courts suggested the idea of a 


t 


102 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 

temple where great multitudes might kneel un¬ 
crowded at their devotions; but, from appear¬ 
ances about the place where the altar should be, 
I judged, that, if one asked the officiating priest 
for the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, 
his prayer would not he unanswered. The edi¬ 
fice recalled to me a similar phenomenon I had 
once looked upon, —the famous Cafffi Pedrocchi 
at Padua. It was the same thing in Italy and 
America: a rich man builds himself a mauso¬ 
leum, and calls it a place of entertainment. The 
fragrance of innumerable libations and the 
smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes 
shall ascend day and night through the arches 
of his funeral monument. What are the poor 
dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of 
spikes that stand at the corners of St. Gene¬ 
vieve’s filigree-cased sarcophagus to this per¬ 
petual offering of sacrifice? 

Ten o’clock in the evening was approaching. 
The telegraph-office would presently close, and 
as yet there were no tidings from Hagerstown. 
Let us step over and see for ourselves. A mes¬ 
sage ! A message! 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAP TAINT 103 

“Captain H still here leaves seven to-morrow 
for Harrisburg Henna Is doing well 

Mrs HK -” 

A note from Dr. Cuyler to the same effect 
came soon afterwards to the hotel. 

We shall sleep well to-night ; but let us sit 
awhile with nubiferous, or, if we may coin a 
word, nepheligenous accompaniment, such as 
shall gently narcotize the over-wearied brain 
and fold its convolutions for slumber like the 
leaves of a lily at nightfall. For now the over¬ 
tense nerves are all unstraining themselves, and 
a buzz, like that which comes over one who 
stops after being long jolted upon an uneasy 
pavement, makes the whole frame alive with a 
luxurious languid sense of all its inmost fibres. 
Our cheerfulness ran over, and the mild, pen¬ 
sive clerk was so magnetized by it that he came 
and sat down with us. He presently confided 
to me, with infinite naYvetS and ingenuousness, 
that, judging from my personal appearance, he 
should not have thought me the writer that he 
in his generosity reckoned me to be. His con- 


104 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


ception, so far as I could reach it, involved a 
huge, uplifted forehead, embossed with protu 
berant organs of the intellectual faculties, such 
as all writers are supposed to possess in abound¬ 
ing measure. While I fell short of his ideal in 
this respect, he was pleased to say that he found 
me by no means the remote and inaccessible 
personage he had imagined, and that I had 
nothing of the dandy about me, which last com¬ 
pliment I had a modest consciousness of most 
abundantly deserving. 

Sweet slumbers brought us to the morning of 
Thursday. The train from Hagerstown was 
due at 11.15 A. M. We took another ride 
behind the codling, who showed us the sights 
of yesterday over again. Being in a gracious 
mood of mind, I enlarged on the varying as¬ 
pects of the town-pumps and other striking 
objects which we had once inspected, as seen 
by the different lights of evening and morning. 
After this, we visited the school-house hospital. 
A fine young fellow, whose arm had been shat¬ 
tered, was just falling into the spasms of lock¬ 
jaw. The beads of sweat stood large and 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 105 


round on his flushed and contracted features. 
He was under the effect of opiates, — why not 
(if his case was desperate, as it seemed to be 
considered) stop his sufferings with chloroform ? 
It was suggested that it might shorten life . 
“ What then ? ” I said. “ Are a dozen addi¬ 
tional spasms worth living for ? ” 

The time approached for the train to arrive 
from Hagerstown, and we went to the station. 
I was struck, while waiting there, with what 
seemed to me a great want of care for the 
safety of the people standing round. Just after 
my companion and myself had stepped off the 
track, I noticed a car coming quietly along at a 
walk, as one may say, without engine, without 
visible conductor, without any person heralding 
its approach, so silently, so insidiously, that I 
could not help thinking how very near it came 
to flattening out me and my match-box worse 
than the Ravel pantomimist and his snuff-box 
were flattened out in the play. The train was 
late, — fifteen minutes, half an hour late, — and 
I began to get nervous, lest something had hap¬ 
pened. While I was looking for it, out started 
5* 


106 MY HUNT AFTER « THE CAPTAIN.' 


a freiglit-train, as if on purpose to meet the 
cars I was expecting, for a grand smash-up. I 
shivered at the thought, and asked an employ6 
of the road, with whom I had formed an ac¬ 
quaintance a few minutes old, why there should 
not be a collision of the expected train with 
this which was just going out. He smiled 
an official smile, and answered that they 
arranged to prevent that, or words to that 
effect. 

Twenty-four hours had not passed from that 
moment when a collision did occur, just out of 
the city, where I feared it, by which at least 
eleven persons were killed, and from forty to 
sixty more were maimed and crippled ! 

To-day there was the delay spoken of, but 
nothing worse. The expected train came in so 
quietly that I was almost startled to see it on 
the track. Let us walk calmly through the 
cars, and look around us. 

In the first car, on the fourth seat to the 
right, I saw my Captain; there saw I him, 
even my first-born, whom I had sought through 
many cities. 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN .” 107 


“ How are you, Boy ? ” 

“ How are you, Dad ? ” 

Such are the proprieties of life, as they are 
observed among us Anglo-Saxons of the nine¬ 
teenth century, decently disguising those natural 
impulses that made Joseph, the Prime-Minister 
of Egypt, weep aloud so that the Egyptians and 
the house of Pharaoh heard, — nay, which had 
once overcome his shaggy old uncle Esau so 
entirely that he fell on his brother’s neck and 
cried like a baby in the presence of all the 
women. But the hidden cisterns of the soul 
may be filling fast with sweet tears, while the 
windows through which it looks are undimmed 
by a drop or a film of moisture. 

These are times in which we cannot live 
solely for selfish joys or griefs. I had not let 
fall the hand I held, when a sad, calm voice 
addressed me by name. I fear that at the 
moment I was too much absorbed in my own 
feelings ; for certainly at any other time I 
should have yielded myself without stint to the 
sympathy which this meeting might well call 
forth. 


108 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


“ You remember my son, Cortland Saunders, 
whom I brought to see you once in Boston ? ” 

“ I do remember him well.” 

“ He was killed on Monday, at Shepherds- 
town. I am carrying his body back with me 
on this train. He was my only child. If you 
could come to my house, — I can hardly call it 
my home now, — it would be a pleasure to me.” 

This young man, belonging in Philadelphia, 
was the author of a “ New System of Latin Par¬ 
adigms,” a work showing extraordinary schol¬ 
arship and capacity. It was this book which 
first made me acquainted with him, and I kept 
him in my memory, for there was genius in the 
youth. Some time afterwards he came to me 
with a modest request to be introduced to Presi¬ 
dent Felton, and one or two others, who would 
aid him in a course of independent study he was 
proposing to himself. I was most happy to 
smooth the way for him, and he came repeat¬ 
edly after this to see me and express his satis¬ 
faction in the opportunities for study he enjoyed 
at Cambridge. He was a dark, still, slender 
person, always with a trance-like remoteness, a 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN ” 109 


mystic dreaminess of manner, such as I never 
saw in any other youth. Whether he heard 
with difficulty, or whether his mind reacted 
slowly on an alien thought, I could not say; 
but his answer would often he behind time, and 
then a vague, sweet smile, or a few words spok¬ 
en under his breath, as if he had been trained in 
sick men’s chambers. For such a young man, 
seemingly destined for the inner life of contem¬ 
plation, to be a soldier seemed almost unnatural. 
Yet he spoke to me of his intention to offer 
himself to his country, and his blood must now 
be reckoned among the precious sacrifices which 
will make her soil sacred forever. Had he 
lived, I doubt not that he would have redeemed 
the rare promise of his earlier years. He has 
done better, for he has died that unborn gen¬ 
erations may attain the hopes held out to our 
nation and to mankind. 

So, then, I had been within ten miles of the 
place where my wounded soldier was lying, and 
then calmly turned my back upon him to come 
once more round by a journey of three or four 
hundred miles to the same region I had left! 


no MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


No mysterious attraction warned me that the 
heart warm with the same blood as mine was 
throbbing so near my own. I thought of that 
lovely, tender passage where Gabriel glides un¬ 
consciously by Evangeline upon the great river. 
Ah, me! if that railroad-crash had been a few 
hours earlier, we two should never have met 
again, after coming so close to each other! 

The source of my repeated disappointments 
was soon made clear enough. The Captain had 
gone to Hagerstown, intending to take the cars 
at once for Philadelphia, as his three friends 
actually did, and as I took it for granted he 
certainly would. But as he walked languidly 
along, some ladies saw him across the street, 
and seeing, were moved with pity, and pitying, 
spoke such soft words that he was tempted to 
accept their invitation and rest awhile beneath 
their hospitable roof. The mansion was old, as 
the dwellings of gentlefolks should be ; the 
ladies were some of them young, and all were 
full of kindness; there were gentle cares, and 
unasked luxuries, and pleasant talk, and music- 
sprinklings from the piano, with a sweet voice 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN HI 


to keep them company, — and all this after the 
swamps of the Chickahominy, the mud and flies 
of Harrison’s Landing, the dragging marches, 
the desperate battles, the fretting wound, the 
jolting ambulance, the log-house, and the rick¬ 
ety milk-cart! Thanks, uncounted thanks to 
the angelic ladies whose charming attentions 
detained him from Saturday to Thursday, to his 
great advantage and my infinite bewilderment! 
As for his wound, how could it do otherwise 
than well under such hands? The bullet had 
gone smoothly through, dodging everything hut 
a few nervous branches, which would come 
right in time and leave him as well as ever. 

At ten that evening we were in Philadel¬ 
phia, the Captain at the house of the friends 
so often referred to, and I the guest of Char¬ 
ley, my kind companion. The Quaker element 
gives an irresistible attraction to these benig¬ 
nant Philadelphia households. Many things 
reminded me that I was no longer in the land 
of the Pilgrims. On the table were Kool Slaa 
and Schmeer Kase , but the good grandmother 
who dispensed with such quiet, simple grace 


112 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 

these and more familiar delicacies was literally 
ignorant of Baked Beans , and asked if it was 
the Lima bean which was employed in that mar¬ 
vellous dish of animalized leguminous farina! 

Charley was pleased with my comparing the 
face of the small Ethiop known to his house¬ 
hold as “ Tines ” to a huckleberry with fea¬ 
tures. He also approved my parallel between 
a certain German blonde young maiden whom 
we passed in the street and the “ Morris 
White” peach. But he was so good-humored 
at times, that, if one scratched a lucifer, he 
accepted it as an illumination. 

A day in Philadelphia left a very agreeable 
impression of the outside of that great city, 
which has endeared itself so much of late to 
all the country by its most noble and generous 
care of our soldiers. Measured by its sover¬ 
eign hotel, the Continental, it would stand at 
the head of our economic civilization. It pro¬ 
vides for the comforts and conveniences, and 
many of the elegances of life, more satisfac¬ 
torily than any American city, perhaps than 
any other city anywhere. Many of its char- 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 113 


acteristics are accounted for to some extent 
by its geographical position. It is the great 
neutral centre of the Continent, where the 
fiery enthusiasms of the South and the keen 
fanaticisms of the North meet at their outer 
limits, and result in a compound which nei¬ 
ther turns litmus red nor turmeric brown. It 
lives largely on its traditions, of which, leaving 
out Franklin and Independence Hall, the most 
imposing must be considered its famous water¬ 
works. In my younger days I visited Fair- 
mount, and it was with a pious reverence that 
I renewed my pilgrimage to that perennial 
fountain. Its watery ventricles were throb¬ 
bing with the same systole and diastole as 
when, the blood of twenty years bounding in 
my own heart, I looked upon their giant mech¬ 
anism. But in the place of “ Pratt’s Garden ” 
was an open park, and the old house where 
Robert Morris held his court in a former gen¬ 
eration was changing to a public restaurant. 
A suspension-bridge cobwebbed itself across the 
Schuylkill where that audacious arch used to 
leap the river at a single bound, — an arch 


114 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.' 


of greater span, as they loved to tell us, than 
was ever before constructed. The Upper Ferry 
Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the Colos¬ 
sus was to the harbor of Rhodes. It had an 
air of dash about it which went far towards 
redeeming the dead level of respectable aver¬ 
age which flattens the physiognomy of the 
rectangular city. Philadelphia will never be 
herself again until another Robert Mills and 
another Lewis Wernwag have shaped her a 
new palladium. She must leap the Schuylkill 
again, or old men will sadly shake their heads, 
like the Jews at the sight of the second temple, 
remembering the glories of that which it re¬ 
placed. 

There are times when Ethiopian minstrelsy 
can amuse, if it does not charm, a weary soul, 
and such a vacant hour there was on this same 
Friday evening. The ‘‘opera-house” was spa¬ 
cious and admirably ventilated. As I was 
listening to the merriment of the sooty buf¬ 
foons, I happened to cast my eyes up to the 
ceiling, and through an open semicircular win¬ 
dow a bright solitary star looked me calmly 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 115 


in the eyes. It was a strange intrusion of 
the vast eternities beckoning from the infinite 
spaces. I called the attention of one of my 
neighbors to it, but “ Bones ” was irresistibly 
droll, and Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or what¬ 
ever the blazing luminary may have been, with 
all his revolving worlds, sailed uncared-for 
down the firmament. 

On Saturday morning we took up our line 
of march for New York. Mr. Felton, Presi¬ 
dent of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and 
Baltimore Railroad, had already called upon 
me, with a benevolent and sagacious look on 
his face which implied that he knew how to 
do me a service and meant to do it. Sure 
enough, when we got to the depot, we found 
a couch spread for the Captain, and both of us 
were passed on to New York with no visits, 
but those of civility, from the conductor. The 
best thing I saw on the route was a rustic 
fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I am 
not quite sure. There was more genius in it 
than in any structure of the kind I have ever 
seen, — each length being of a special pattern, 


116 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 

ramified, reticulated, contorted, as the limbs 
of the trees had grown. I trust some friend 
will photograph or stereograph this fence for 
me, to go with the view of the spires of 
Frederick already referred to, as mementos of 
my journey. 

I had come to feeling that I knew most of 
the respectably dressed people whom I met in 
the cars, and had been in contact with them 
at some time or other. Three or four ladies 
and gentlemen were near us, forming a group 
by themselves. Presently one addressed me 
by name, and, on inquiry, I found him to be 
the gentleman who was with me in the pulpit 
as Orator on the occasion of another Phi Beta 
Kappa poem, one delivered at New Haven. 
The party were very courteous and friendly, 
and contributed in various ways to our com¬ 
fort. 

It sometimes seems to me as if there were 
only about a thousand people in the world, 
who keep going round and round behind the 
scenes and then before them, like the “army” in 
a beggarly stage-show. Suppose that I should 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 117 


really wish, some time or other, to get away 
from this everlasting circle of revolving super¬ 
numeraries, where should I buy a ticket the 
like of which was not in some of their pockets, 
or find a seat to which some one of them was 
not a neighbor ? 

A little less than a year before, after the 
Ball’s-Bluff accident, the Captain, then the 
Lieutenant, and myself had reposed for a night 
on our homeward journey at the Fifth-Avenue 
Hotel, where we were lodged on the ground- 
floor, and fared sumptuously. We were not 
so peculiarly fortunate this time, the house being 
really very full. Farther from the flowers and 
nearer to the stars, — to reach the neighbor¬ 
hood of which last the per ardua of three or 
four flights of stairs was formidable for any 
mortal, wounded or well. The “vertical rail¬ 
way” settled that for us, however. It is a 
giant corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth 
cork, which, by some divine judgment, is no 
sooner drawn than it is replaced in its position. 
This ascending and descending stopper is hol¬ 
low, carpeted, with cushioned seats, and is 


118 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN 


watched over by two condemned souls, called 
conductors, one of whom is said to be named 
Ixion, and the other Sisyphus. 

I love New York, because, as in Paris, every¬ 
body that lives in it feels that it is his prop¬ 
erty,— at least, as much as it is anybody’s. 
My Broadway, in particular, I love almost as 
I used to love my Boulevards. I went, there¬ 
fore, with peculiar interest, on the day that 
we rested at our grand hotel, to visit some 
new pleasure-grounds the citizens had been ar¬ 
ranging for us, and which I had not yet seen. 
The Central Park is an expanse of wild coun¬ 
try, well crumpled so as to form ridges which 
will give views and hollows that will hold 
water. The hips and elbows and other bones 
of Nature stick out here and there in the 
shape of rocks which give character to the 
scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable 
look to a landscape that without them would 
have been in danger of being fattened by art 
and money out of all its native features. The 
roads were fine, the sheets of water beautiful, 
the bridges handsome, the swans elegant in 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN” 119 


their deportment, the grass green and as short 
as a fast horse’s winter coat. I could not 
learn whether it was kept so by clipping or 
singeing. I was delighted with my new prop¬ 
erty, — but it cost me four dollars to get there, 
so far was it beyond the Pillars of Hercules 
of the fashionable quarter. What it will be 
by and by depends on circumstances ; but at 
present it is as much central to New York as 
Brookline is central to Boston. The question 
is not between Mr. Olmsted’s admirably ar¬ 
ranged, but remote pleasure-ground and our 
Common, with its batrachian pool, but between 
his J^rcentric Park and our finest suburban 
scenery, between its artificial reservoirs and the 
broad natural sheet of Jamaica Pond. I say 
this not invidiously, but in justice to the beau¬ 
ties which surround our own metropolis. To 
compare the situations of any dwellings in 
either of the great cities with those which look 
upon the Common, the Public Garden, the 
waters of the Back Bay, would be to take 
an unfair advantage of Fifth Avenue and Wal¬ 
nut Street. St. Botolph’s daughter dresses in 


120 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAINr 


plainer clothes than her more stately sisters, 
but she wears an emerald on her right hand 
and a diamond on her left that Cybele her¬ 
self need not be ashamed of. 

On Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of 
September, we took the cars for home. Va¬ 
cant lots, with Irish and pigs ; vegetable-gar¬ 
dens ; straggling houses; the high bridge; 
villages, not enchanting; then Stamford; then 
Norwalk. Here, on the sixth of May, 1853, 
I passed close on the heels of the great dis¬ 
aster. But that my lids were heavy on that 
morning, my readers would probably have had 
no further trouble with me. Two of my 
friends saw the car in which they rode break 
in the middle and leave them hanging over 
the abyss. From Norwalk to Boston, that 
day’s journey of two hundred miles was a 
long funeral-procession. 

Bridgeport, waiting for Iranistan to rise 
from its ashes with all its phoenix-egg domes, 
— bubbles of wealth that broke, ready to be 
blown again, iridescent as ever, which is pleas¬ 
ant, for the world likes cheerful Mr. Barnum’s 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 121 


success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes 
that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with 
hay-cocks lying about for balls, — romantic 
with West Rock and its legends, — cursed 
with a detestable depot, whose niggardly ar¬ 
rangements crowd the track so murderously 
close to the wall that the peine forte et dure 
must be the frequent penalty of an inno¬ 
cent walk on its platform, — with its neat 
carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old col¬ 
lege-dormitories, its vistas of elms and its di- 
sltevelled weeping-willows ; Hartford, substan¬ 
tial, well-bridged, many-steepled city, — every 
conical spire an extinguisher of some nine¬ 
teenth-century heresy; so onward, by and 
across the broad, shallow Connecticut, — dull 
red road and dark river woven in like warp 
and woof by the shuttle of the darting en¬ 
gine ; then Springfield, the wide-meadowed, 
well-feeding, horse-loving, hot-summered, giant- 
treed town, — city among villages, village 
among cities; Worcester, with its Daedalian 
labyrinth of crossing railroad-bars, where the 
snorting Minotaurs, breathing fire and smoke 


6 


122 MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN: 


and hot vapors, are stabled in their dens; 
Framingham, fair cup-bearer, leaf-cinctured 
Hebe of the deep-bosomed Queen sitting by 
the sea-side on the throne of the Six Nations. 
And now I begin to know the road, not by 
towns, but by single dwellings; not by miles, 
but by rods. The poles of the great magnet 
that draws in all the iron tracks through the 
grooves of all the mountains must be near at 
hand, for here are crossings, and sudden stops, 
and screams of alarmed engines heard all 
around. The tall granite obelisk comes into 
view far away on the left, its bevelled cap¬ 
stone sharp against the sky; the lofty chim¬ 
neys of Charlestown and East Cambridge 
Haunt their smoky banners up in the thin 
air; and now one fair bosom of the three- 
hilled city, with its dome-crowned summit, 
reveals itself, as when many-breasted Ephesian 
Artemis appeared with half-open chlamys be¬ 
fore her worshippers. 

Fling open the window-blinds of the cham¬ 
ber that looks out on the waters and towards 
the western sun ! Let the joyous light shine 


MY HUNT AFTER “ THE CAPTAIN.” 123 


in upon the pictures that hang upon its walls 
and the shelves thick-set with the names of 
poets and philosophers and sacred teachers, in 
whose pages our boys learn that life is noble 
only when it is held cheap by the side of 
honor and of duty. Lay him in his own 
bed, and let him sleep off his aches and wea¬ 
riness. So comes down another night over 
this household, unbroken by any messenger of 
evil tidings, — a night of peaceful rest and 
grateful thoughts ; for this our son and brother 
was dead and is alive again, and was lost and 
is found. 


THE STEREOSCOPE AND THE 
STEREOGRAPH. 


EMOCRITUS of Abdera, commonly 



LJ known as the Laughing Philosopher, 
probably because he did not consider the study 
of truth inconsistent with a cheerful counte¬ 
nance, believed and taught that all bodies were 
continually throwing off certain images like 
themselves, which subtile emanations, striking 
on our bodily organs, gave rise to our sensa¬ 
tions. Epicurus borrowed the idea from him, 
and incorporated it into the famous system, of 
which Lucretius has given us the most popular 
version. Those who are curious on the matter 
will find the poet’s description at the beginning 
of his fourth book. Forms, effigies, membranes, 
or films, are the nearest representatives of the 
terms applied to these effluences. They are 



THE STEREOSCOPE. 


125 


perpetually shed from the surfaces of solids, 
as bark is shed by trees. Cortex is, indeed, one 
of the names applied to them by Lucretius. 

These evanescent films may be seen in one of 
their aspects in any clear, calm sheet of water, 
in a mirror, in the eye of an animal by one who 
looks at it in front, but better still by the con¬ 
sciousness behind the eye in the ordinary act of 
vision. They must be packed like the leaves of 
a closed book ; for suppose a mirror to give an 
image of an object a mile off, it will give one at 
every point less than a mile, though this were 
subdivided into a million parts. Yet the images 
will not be the same ; for the one taken a mile 
off will be very small, at half a mile as large 
again, at a hundred feet, fifty times as large, and 
so on, as long as the mirror can contain the 
image. 

Under the action of light, then, a body makes 
its superficial aspect potentially present at a dis¬ 
tance, becoming appreciable as a shadow or as a 
picture. But remove the cause, — the body 
itself, — and the effect is removed. The man 
beholdeth himself in the glass, and goeth his 


12G 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


way, and straightway both the mirror and the 
mirrored forget what manner of man he was. 
These visible films or membranous exuvice of 
objects, which the old philosophers talked about, 
have no real existence, separable from their 
illuminated source, and perish instantly when it 
is withdrawn. 

If a man had handed a metallic speculum to 
Democritus of Abdera, and told him to look at 
his face in it while his heart was beating thirty 
or forty times, promising that one of the films 
his face was shedding should stick there, so that 
neither he, nor it, nor anybody should forget 
what manner of man he was, the Laughing 
Philosopher would probably have vindicated his 
claim to his title by an explosion that would 
have astonished the speaker. 

This is just what the Daguerrotype has done. 
It has fixed the most fleeting of our illusions, that 
which the apostle and the philosopher and the 
poet have alike used as the type of instability and 
unreality. The photograph has completed the 
triumph, by making a sheet of paper reflect im¬ 
ages like a mirror and hold them as a picture. 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


127 


This triumph of human ingenuity is the most 
audacious, remote, improbable, incredible, — the 
one that would seem least likely to be regained, 
if all traces of it were lost, of all the discoveries 
man has made. It has become such an every¬ 
day matter with us, that we forget its miracu¬ 
lous nature, as we forget that of the sun itself, 
to which we owe the creations of our new art. 
Yet in all the prophecies of dreaming enthusiasts, 
in all the random guesses of the future conquests 
over matter, we do not remember any prediction 
of such an inconceivable wonder, as our neigh¬ 
bor round the corner, or the proprietor of the 
small house on wheels, standing on the village 
common, will furnish any of us for the most 
painfully slender remuneration. No Century 
of Inventions includes this among its possibili¬ 
ties. Nothing but the vision of a Laputan, who 
passed his days in extracting sunbeams out of 
cucumbers, could have reached such a height of 
delirium as to rave about the time when a man 
should paint his miniature by looking at a blank 
tablet, and a multitudinous wilderness of forest 
foliage or an endless Babel of roofs and spires 


128 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


stamp itself, in a moment, so faithfully and so 
minutely, that one may creep over the surface 
of the picture with his microscope and find 
every leaf perfect, or read the letters of distant 
signs, and see what was the play at the u Va¬ 
ries ” or the “ Victoria ” on the evening of the 
day when it was taken, just as he would sweep 
the real view with a spy-glass to explore all that 
it contains. 

Some years ago, we sent a page or two to 
one of the magazines, — the “ Knickerbocker,’* 
if we remember aright, — in which the story 
was told from the “ Arabian Nights,” of the 
three kings’ sons, who each wished to obtain 
the hand of a lovely princess, and received for 
answer, that he who brought home the most 
wonderful object should obtain the lady’s hand 
as his reward. Our readers, doubtless, remem¬ 
ber the original tale, with the flying carpet, the 
tube which showed what a distant friend was 
doing by looking into it, and the apple which 
gave relief to the most desperate sufferings only 
by inhalation of its fragrance. The railroad- 
car, the telegraph, and the apple-flavored clilo- 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


120 


roform, could and do realize, every day, — as 
was stated in the passage referred to, with a 
certain rhetorical amplitude not doubtfully sug¬ 
gestive of the lecture-room, — all that was 
fabled to have been done by the carpet, the 
tube, and the fruit of the Arabian story. 

All these inventions force themselves upon us 
to the full extent of their significance. It is 
therefore hardly necessary to waste any con¬ 
siderable amount of rhetoric upon wonders that 
are so thoroughly appreciated. When human 
art says to each one of us, I will give you ears 
that can hear a whisper in New Orleans, and 
legs that can walk six hundred miles in a day, 
and if, in consequence of any defect of rail or 
carriage, you should be so injured that your 
own very insignificant walking members must 
be taken off, I can make the surgeon’s visit a 
pleasant dream for you, on awaking from which 
you will ask when he is coming to do that 
which he has done already, — what is the use 
of poetical or rhetorical amplification ? But 
this other invention of the mirror with a memory , 
and especially that application of it which has 


130 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


given us the wonders of the stereoscope, is not 
so easily, completely, universally recognized in 
all the immensity of its applications and sug¬ 
gestions. The stereoscope, and the pictures it 
gives, are, however, common enough to be in 
the hands of many of our readers ; and as many 
of those who are not acquainted with it must 
before long become as familiar with it as they 
are now with friction-matches, we feel sure that 
a few pages relating to it will not be unaccept¬ 
able. 

Our readers may like to know the outlines of 
the process of making daguerrotypes and pho¬ 
tographs, as just furnished us by Mr. Whipple, 
one of the most successful operators in this 
country. We omit many of those details which 
are everything to the practical artist, but noth¬ 
ing to the general reader. We must premise, 
that certain substances undergo chemical alter¬ 
ations, when exposed to the light, which produce 
a change of color. Some of the compounds of 
silver possess this faculty to a remarkable de¬ 
gree, — as the common indelible marking-ink 
(a solution of nitrate of silver), which soon 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


131 


darkens in the light, shows us every day. This 
is only one of the innumerable illustrations of 
the varied effects of light on color. A living 
plant owes its brilliant hues to the sunshine ; 
but a dead one, or the tints extracted from it, 
will fade in the same rays which clothe the tulip 
in crimson and gold, — as our lady-readers who 
have rich curtains in their drawing-rooms know 
full well. The sun, then, is a master of chiaros¬ 
curo, and, if he has a living petal for his pallet, 
is the first of colorists. Let us walk into his 
studio, and examine some of his painting ma¬ 
chinery. 

1. The Daguerrotype. — A silver-plated 
sheet of copper is resilvered by electro-plating, 
and perfectly polished. It is then exposed in a 
glass box to the vapor of iodine until its surface 
turns to a golden yellow. Then it is exposed 
in another box to the fumes of the bromide of 
lime until it becomes of a blood-red tint. Then 
it is exposed once more, for a few seconds, to 
the vapor of iodine. The plate is now sensitive 
to light, and is of course kept from it, until, 


132 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


having been placed in the darkened camera, 
the screen is withdrawn and the camera-picture 
falls upon it. In strong light, and with the best 
instruments, three seconds’ exposure is enough, 
— but the time varies with circumstances. The 
plate is now withdrawn and exposed to the va¬ 
por of mercury at 212°. Where the daylight 
was strongest, the sensitive coating of the plate 
has undergone such a chemical change, that the 
mercury penetrates readily to the silver, pro¬ 
ducing a minute white granular deposit upon it, 
like a very thin fall of snow, drifted by the 
wind. The strong lights are little heaps of 
these granules, the middle lights thinner sheets 
of them ; the shades are formed by the dark 
silver itself, thinly sprinkled only, as the earth 
shows, with a few scattered snow-flakes on its 
surface. The precise chemical nature of these 
granules we care less for than their palpable 
presence, which may be perfectly made out by 
a microscope magnifying fifty diameters, or even 
less. 

The picture thus formed would soon fade 
under the action of light, in consequence of 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


133 


further changes in the chemical elements of the 
film of which it consists. Some of these ele¬ 
ments are therefore removed by washing it with 
a solution of hyposulphite of soda, after which it 
is rinsed with pure water. It is now permanent 
in the light, but a touch wipes off the picture 
as it does the bloom from a plum. To fix it, a 
solution of hyposulphite of soda containing chlo¬ 
ride of gold is poured on the plate, while this 
is held over a spirit-lamp. It is then again 
rinsed with pure water, and is ready for its 
frame. 

2. The Photograph. — Just as we must 
have a mould before we can make a cast, we 
must get a negative or reversed picture on glass 
before we can get our positive or natural pic¬ 
ture. The first thing, then, is to lay a sensitive 
coating on a piece of glass, — crown-glass, 
which has a natural surface, being preferable 
to plate-glass. Collodion , which is a solution 
of gun-cotton in alcohol and ether, mingled 
with a solution of iodide and bromide of potas¬ 
sium, is used to form a thin coating over the 


134 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


glass. Before the plate is dry, it is dipped into 
a solution of nitrate of silver, where it remains 
from one to three or four minutes. Here, then, 
we have essentially the same chemical elements 
that we have seen employed in the daguer- 
rotype, — namely, iodine, bromine, and silver; 
and by their mutual reactions in the last process 
we have formed the sensitive iodide and bro¬ 
mide of silver. The glass is now placed, still wet, 
in the camera, and there remains from three 
seconds to one or two minutes, according to cir¬ 
cumstances. It is then washed with a solution 
of sulphate of iron. Every light spot in the 
camera-picture becomes dark on the sensitive 
coating of the glass-plate. But where the shad¬ 
ows or dark parts of the camera-picture fall, 
the sensitive coating is less darkened, or not at 
all, if the shadows are very deep, and so these 
shadows of the camera-picture become the lights 
of the glass-picture, as the lights become the 
shadows. Again, the picture is reversed, just 
as in every camera-obscura where the image is 
received on a screen direct from the lens. Thus 
the glass plate has the right part of the object 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


135 


on the left side of its picture, and the left part 
on its right side ; its light is darkness, and its 
darkness is light. Everything is just as wrong 
as it can be, except that the relations of each 
wrong to the other wrongs are like the relations 
of the corresponding rights to each other in 
the original natural image. This is a negative 
picture. 

Extremes meet. Every given point of the 
picture is as far from truth as a lie can be. But 
in travelling away from the pattern it has gone 
round a complete circle, and is at once as re¬ 
mote from Nature and as near it as possible.— 
“ How far is it to Taunton ? ” said a country¬ 
man, who was walking exactly the wrong way to 
reach that commercial and piscatory centre.— 
“ ’Baout twenty-five thaousan’ mild,” — said the 
boy he asked, — “ ’f y’ go ’z y’ V goin’ naow, 
V ’baout haaf a mild ’f y’ turn right raoun’ ’n’ 
go t’ other way.” 

The negative picture being formed, it is 
washed with a solution of hyposulphite of soda, 
to remove the soluble principles which are liable 
to decomposition, and then coated with shellac 
varnish to protect it. 






13G 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


This negative is now to give birth to a posi 
live , — this mass of contradictions to assert iti 
hidden truth in a perfect harmonious affirmation 
of the realities of Nature. Behold the process ! 

A sheet of the best linen paper is dipped in 
salt water and suffered to dry. Then a solution 
of nitrate of silver is poured over it and it is 
dried in a dark place. This paper is now sensi¬ 
tive ; it has a conscience, and is afraid of day¬ 
light. Press it against the glass negative and 
lay them in the sun, the glass uppermost, leav¬ 
ing them so for from three to ten minutes. The 
paper, having the picture formed on it, is then 
washed with the solution of hyposulphite of soda, 
rinsed in pure water, soaked again in a solution 
of hyposulphite of soda, to which, however, 
the chloride of gold has been added, and again 
rinsed. It is then sized or varnished.. 

Out of the perverse and totally depraved neg¬ 
ative, — where it might almost seem as if some 
magic and diabolic power had wrenched all things 
from their proprieties, where the light of the eye 
was darkness, and the deepest blackness was 
gilded with the brightest glare, — is to come 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH . 


137 


the true end of all this series of operations, a 
copy of Nature in all her sweet gradations and 
harmonies and contrasts. 

We owe the suggestion to a great wit, who 
overflowed our small intellectual home-lot with 
a rushing freshet of fertilizing talk the other 
day, — one of our friends, who quarries thought 
on his own premises, but does not care to build 
his blocks into books and essays, — that perhaps 
this world is only the negative of that better one 
in which lights will be turned to shadows and 
shadows into light, but all harmonized, so that 
we shall see why these ugly patches, these mis¬ 
placed gleams and blots, were wrought into the 
temporary arrangements of our planetary life. 

For, lo! when the sensitive paper is laid in 
the sun under the negative glass, every dark 
spot on the glass arrests a sunbeam, and so the 
spot of the paper lying beneath remains un¬ 
changed ; but every light space of the negative 
lets the sunlight through, and the sensitive 
paper beneath confesses its weakness, and be¬ 
trays it by growing dark just in proportion to 
the glare that strikes upon it. So, too, we have 


138 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


only to turn the glass before laying it on the 
paper, and we bring all the natural relations 
of the object delineated back again, — its right 
to the right of the picture, its left to the picture’s 
left. 

On examining the glass negative by trans¬ 
mitted light with a power of a hundred diam¬ 
eters, we observe minute granules, whether 
crystalline or not we cannot say, very similar 
to those described in the account of the da- 
guerrotype. But now their effect is reversed. 
Being opaque, they darken the glass wherever 
they are accumulated, just as the snow darkens 
our skylights. Where these particles are drift¬ 
ed, therefore, we have our shadows, and where 
they are thinly scattered, our lights. On ex¬ 
amining the paper photographs, we have found 
no distinct granules, but diffused stains of deeper 
or lighter shades. 

Such is the sun-picture, in the form in which 
we now most commonly meet it, — for the da- 
guerrotype, perfect and cheap as it is, and 
admirably adapted for miniatures, has almost 
disappeared from the field of landscape, still life, 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


139 


architecture, and genre painting, to make room 
for the photograph. Mr. Whipple tells us that 
even now he takes a much greater number of 
miniature portraits on metal than on paper ; and 
yet, except occasionally a statue, it is rare to see 
anything besides a portrait shown in a daguerro- 
type. But the greatest number of sun-pictures 
we see are the photographs which are intended 
to be looked at with the aid of the instrument 
we are next to describe, and to the stimulus of 
which the recent vast extension of photographic 
copies of Nature and Art is mainly owing. 

3. The Stereoscope. — This instrument was 
invented by Professor Wheatstone, and first de¬ 
scribed by him in 1838. It was only a year 
after this that M. Daguerre made known his dis¬ 
covery in Paris ; and almost at the same time 
Mr. Fox Talbot sent his communication to the 
Royal Society, giving an account of his method 
of obtaining pictures on paper by the action of 
light. Iodine was discovered in 1811, bromine 
in 1826, chloroform in 1831, gun-cotton, from 
which collodion is made, in 1846, the electro- 


140 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


plating process about the same time with pho¬ 
tography ; “all things, great and small, work¬ 
ing together to produce what seemed at first as 
delightful, but as fabulous, as Aladdin’s ring, 
which is now as little suggestive of surprise as 
our daily bread.” 

A stereoscope is an instrument which makes 
surfaces look solid. All pictures in which per¬ 
spective and light and shade are properly man¬ 
aged, have more or less of the effect of solidity; 
but by this instrument that effect is so height¬ 
ened as to produce an appearance of reality 
which cheats the senses with its seeming truth. 

There is good reason to believe that the ap¬ 
preciation of solidity by the eye is purely a mat¬ 
ter of education. The famous case of a young 
man who underwent the operation of couching 
for cataract, related by Cheselden, and a similar 
one reported in the Appendix to Miiller’s Phys¬ 
iology, go to prove that everything is seen only 
as a superficial extension, until the other senses 
have taught the eye to recognize depth , or the 
third dimension, which gives solidity, by con¬ 
verging outlines, distribution of light and shade, 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


141 


change of size and of the texture of surfaces. 
Cheselden’s patient thought “ all objects what¬ 
ever touched his eyes, as what he felt did his 
skin.” The patient whose case is reported by 
Muller could not tell the form of a cube held 
obliquely before his eye from that of a flat piece 
of pasteboard presenting the same outline. Each 
of these patients saw only with one eye, — the 
other being destroyed, in one case, and not 
restored to sight until long after the first, in 
the other case. In two months’ time Chesel¬ 
den’s patient had learned to know solids ; in 
fact, he argued so logically from light and shade 
and perspective, that he felt of pictures, expect¬ 
ing to find reliefs and depressions, and was sur¬ 
prised to discover that they were flat surfaces. 
If these patients had suddenly recovered the 
sight of both eyes, they would probably have 
learned to recognize solids more easily and 
speedily. 

We can commonly tell whether an object is 
solid, readily enough with one eye, but still 
better with two eyes, and sometimes only by 
using both. If wo look at a square piece of 


142 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


ivory with one eye alone, we cannot tell wheth¬ 
er it is a scale of veneer, or the side of a cube, 
or the base of a pyramid, or the end of a prism. 
But if we now open the other eye, we shall see 
one or more of its sides, if it have any, and then 
know it to be a solid, and what kind of a solid. 

We see something with the second eye, which 
we did not see with the first; in other words, 
the two eyes see different pictures of the same 
thing, for the obvious reason that they look from 
points two or three inches apart. By means of 
these two different views of an object, the mind, 
as it were, feels round it and gets an idea of its 
solidity. We clasp an object with our eyes, as 
with our arms, or with our hands, or with our 
thumb and finger, and then we know it to be 
something more than a surface. This, of course, 
is an illustration of the fact, rather than an ex¬ 
planation of its mechanism. 

Though, as we have seen, the two eyes 
look on two different pictures, we perceive 
but one picture. The two have run together 
and become blended in a third, which shows 
us everything we see in each. But, in order 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH 


143 


that they should so run together, both the 
eye and the brain must be in a natural state. 
Push one eye a little inward with the fore¬ 
finger, and the image is doubled, or at least 
confused. Only certain parts of the two ret¬ 
inae work harmoniously together, and you have 
disturbed their natural relations. Again, take 
two or three glasses more than temperance 
permits, and you see double; the eyes are 
right enough, probably, but the brain is in 
trouble, and does not report their telegraphic 
messages correctly. These exceptions illus¬ 
trate the every-day truth, that, when we are 
in right condition, our two eyes see two some¬ 
what different pictures, which our perception 
combines to form one picture, representing 
objects in all their dimensions, and not merely 
as surfaces. 

Now, if we can get two artificial pictures 
of any given object, one as we should see it 
with the right eye, the other as we should 
see it with the left eye, and then, looking 
at the right picture, and that only, with the 
right eye, and at the left picture, and that 


144 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


only, with the left eye, contrive some way 
of making these pictures run together as we 
have seen our two views of a natural object 
do, we shall get the sense of solidity that nat¬ 
ural objects give us. The arrangement which 
effects it will be a stereoscope , according to 
our definition of that instrument. How shall 
we attain these two ends ? 

1. An artist can draw an object as he sees 
it, looking at it only with his right eye. 
Then he can draw a second view of the 
same object as he sees it with his left eye. 
It will not be hard to draw a cube or an 
octahedron in this way; indeed, the first ste¬ 
reoscopic figures were pairs of outlines, right 
and left, of solid bodies thus drawn. But the 
minute details of a portrait, a group, or a 
landscape, all so nearly alike to the two eyes, 
yet not identical in each picture of our natu¬ 
ral double view, would defy any human skill 
to reproduce them exactly. And just here 
comes in the photograph to meet the diffi¬ 
culty. A first picture of an object is taken ; 
then the instrument is moved a couple of 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


145 


inches or a little more, the distance between 
the human eyes, and a second picture is taken. 
Better than this, two pictures are taken at 
once in a double camera. 

We were just now stereographed, ourselves, 
at a moment’s warning, as if we were fugi¬ 
tives from justice. A skeleton shape, of about 
a man’s height, its head covered with a black 
veil, glided across the floor, faced us, lifted its 
veil, and took a preliminary look. When we 
had grown sufficiently rigid in our attitude 
of studied ease, and got our umbrella into a 
position of thoughtful carelessness, and put 
our features with much effort into an uncon¬ 
strained aspect of cheerfulness tempered with 
dignity, of manly firmness blended with wo¬ 
manly sensibility, of courtesy, as much as to 
imply, “ You honor me, Sir,” toned or sized, 
as one may say, with something of the self-asser¬ 
tion of a human soul which reflects proudly, 
“ I am superior to all this,” — when, I say, 
we were all right, the spectral Mokanna 
dropped his long veil, and his w’aiting-slave 
put a sensitive tablet under its folds. The 
7 j 


146 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


veil was then again lifted, and the two great 
glassy eyes stared at us once more for some 
thirty seconds. The veil then dropped again; 
but in the mean time the shrouded sorcerer 
had stolen our double image; we were im¬ 
mortal. Posterity might thenceforth inspect 
us (if not otherwise engaged), not as a sur¬ 
face only, but in all our dimensions as * an 
undisputed solid man of Boston. 

2. We have now obtained the double-eyed 
or twin pictures, or Stereograph, if we may 
coin a name. But the pictures are two, and 
we want to slide them into each other, so to 
speak, as in natural vision, that we may see 
them as one. How shall we make one pic¬ 
ture out of two, the corresponding parts of 
which are separated by a distance of two or 
three inches ? 

We can do this in two ways. First, by 
squinting as we look at them. But this is 
tedious, painful, and to some impossible, or at 
least very difficult. We shall find it much 
easier to look through a couple of glasses that 
squint for us. If at the same time they mag - 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


147 


nify the two pictures, we gain just so much 
in the distinctness of the picture, which, if 
the figures on the slide are small, is a great 
advantage. One of the easiest ways of ac¬ 
complishing this double purpose is to cut a 
convex lens through the middle, grind the 
curves of the two halves down to straight 
lines, and join them by their thin edges. 
This is a squinting magnifier; and if arranged 
so that with it's right half we see the right 
picture on the slide, and with its left half 
the left picture, it squints them both inward, 
so that they run together and form a single 
picture. 

Such are the stereoscope and the photo¬ 
graph, by the aid of which form is henceforth 
to make itself seen through the world of intel¬ 
ligence, as thought has long made itself heard 
by means of the art of printing. The mor- 
photype, or form-print, must hereafter take its 
place by the side of the logotype , or word- 
print. The stereograph , as we have called the 
double picture designed for the stereoscope, is 


148 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


to be the card of introduction to make all 
mankind acquaintances. 

The first effect of looking at a good photo¬ 
graph through the stereoscope is a surprise 
such as no painting ever produced. The mind 
feels its way into the very depths of the pic¬ 
ture. The scraggy branches of a tree in the 
foreground run out at us as if they would 
scratch our eyes out. The elbow of a figure 
stands forth so as to make us almost un¬ 
comfortable. Then there is such a frightful 
amount of detail, that we have the same sense 
of infinite complexity which Nature gives us. 
A painter shows us masses ; the stereoscopic 
figure spares us nothing, — all must be there, 
every stick, straw, scratch, as faithfully as 
the dome of St. Peter’s, or the summit of 
Mont Blanc, or the ever-moving stillness of 
Niagara. The sun is no respecter of persons 
or of things. 

This is one infinite charm of the photo¬ 
graphic delineation. Theoretically, a perfect 
photograph is absolutely inexhaustible. In a 
picture you can find nothing which the artist 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


149 


lias not seen before you; but in a perfect 
photograph there will be as many beauties 
lurking, unobserved, as there are flowers that 
blush unseen in forests and meadows. It is 
a mistake to suppose one knows a stereoscopic 
picture when he has studied it a hundred 
times by the aid of the best of our common 
instruments. Do we know all that there is 
in a landscape by looking out at it from our 
parlor windows ? In one of the glass stereo¬ 
scopic views of Table Rock, two figures, so 
minute as to be mere objects of comparison 
with the surrounding vastness, may be seen 
standing side by side. Look at the two faces 
with a strong magnifier, and you could iden¬ 
tify their owners, if you met them in a court 
of law. 

Many persons suppose that they are looking 
on miniatures of the objects represented, when 
they see them in the stereoscope. They will 
be surprised to be told that they see most 
objects as large as they appear in nature. A 
few simple experiments will show how what 
we see in ordinaiy vision is modified in our 


150 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


perceptions by what we think we see. We 
made a sham stereoscope, the other day, with 
no glasses, and an opening in the place where 
the pictures belong, about the size of one of 
the common stereoscopic pictures. Through 
this we got a very ample view of the town of 
Cambridge, including Mount Auburn and the 
Colleges, in a single field of vision. We do 
not recognize how minute distant objects really 
look to us, without something to bring the 
fact home to our conceptions. A man does 
not deceive us as to his real size when we 
see him at the distance of the length of Cam¬ 
bridge Bridge. But hold a common black 
pin before the eyes at the distance of distinct 
vision, and one twentieth of its length, near¬ 
est the point, is enough to cover him so that 
he cannot be seen. The head of the same 
pin will cover one of the Cambridge horse- 
cars at the same distance, and conceal the 
tower of Mount Auburn, as seen from Boston. 

We are near enough to an edifice to see it 
well, when we can easily read an inscription 
upon it. The stereoscopic views of the arches 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


151 


of Constantine and of Titus give not only every 
letter of the old inscriptions, but render the 
grain of the stone itself. On the pediment of 
the Pantheon may be read, not only the words 
traced by Agrippa, but a rough inscription 
above it, scratched or hacked into the stone 
by some wanton hand during an insurrectionary 
tumult. 

This distinctness of the lesser details of a 
building or a landscape often gives us incidental 
truths which interest us more than the central 
object of the picture. Here is Alloway Kirk, 
in the churchyard of which you may read a 
real story by the side of the ruin that tells of 
more romantic fiction. There stands the stone 
“ Erected by James Russell, seedsman, Ayr, in 
memory of his children,” — three little boys, 
James and Thomas and John, all snatched 
away from him in the space of three succes¬ 
sive summer-days, and lying under the matted 
grass in the shadow of the old witch-haunted 
walls. It was Burns’s Alloway Kirk we paid 
for, and we find we have bought a share in the 
griefs of James Russell, seedsman; for is not 


152 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


the stone that tells this blinding sorrow of real 
life the true centre of the picture, and not the 
roofless pile which reminds us of an idle le¬ 
gend ? 

We have often found these incidental glimpses 
of life and death running away with us from the 
main object the picture was meant to delineate. 
The more evidently accidental their introduc¬ 
tion, the more trivial they are in themselves, 
the more they take hold of the imagination. 
It is common to find an object in one of the 
twin pictures which we miss in the other; the 
person or the vehicle having moved in the 
interval of taking the two photographs. There 
is before us a view of the Pool of David at 
Hebron, in which a shadowy figure appears at 
the water’s edge, in the right-hand farther cor¬ 
ner of the right-hand picture only. This muf¬ 
fled shape stealing silently into the solemn scene 
has already written a hundred biographies in 
our imagination. In the lovely glass stereo¬ 
graph of the Lake of Brienz, on the left-hand 
side, a vaguely hinted female figure stands by 
the margin of the fair water; on the other side 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


153 


of the picture she is not seen. This is life; we 
seem to see her come and go. All the longings, 
passions, experiences, possibilities of womanhood 
animate that gliding shadow which has flitted 
through our consciousness, nameless, dateless, 
featureless, yet more profoundly real than the 
sharpest of portraits traced by a human hand. 
Here is the Fountain of the Ogre, at Berne. 
In the right picture two women are chatting, 
with arms akimbo, over its basin; before the 
plate for the left picture is got ready, “ one 
shall be taken and the other left”; look! on 
the left side there is but one woman, and you 
may see the blur where the other is melting 
into thin air as she fades forever from your 
eyes. 

O, infinite volumes of poems that I treasure 
in this small library of glass and pasteboard! 
I creep over the vast features of Raineses, on 
the face of his rock-hewn Nubian temple; I 
scale the huge mountain-crystal that calls itself 
the Pyramid of Cheops. I pace the length of 
the three Titanic stones of the wall of Baalbec, 
— mightiest masses of quarried rock that man 
7* 


.54 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


has lifted into the air; and then I dive into 
some inass of foliage with my microscope, and 
trace the veinings of a leaf so delicately wrought 
in the painting not made with hands, that I can 
almost see its down and the green aphis that 
sucks its juices. I look into the eyes of the 
caged tiger, and on the scaly train of the croco¬ 
dile, stretched on the sands of the river that 
has mirrored a hundred dynasties. I stroll 
through Rhenish vineyards, I sit under Roman 
arches, I w T alk the streets of once buried cities, 
I look into the chasms of Alpine glaciers, and 
on the rush of wasteful cataracts. I pass, in a 
moment, from the banks of the Charles to the 
ford of the Jordan, and leave my outward frame 
in the arm-chair at my table, while in spirit I 
am looking down upon Jerusalem from the 
Mount of Olives. 

“ Give me the full tide of life at Charing 
Cross,” said Dr. Johnson. Here is Charing 
Cross, but without the full tide of life. A per 
petual stream of figures leaves no definite shapes 
upon the picture. But on one side of this ster¬ 
eoscopic doublet a little London “gent” is lean- 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


155 


ing pensively against a post; on the other 
side he is seen sitting at the foot of the 
next post; — what is the matter with the lit¬ 
tle “ gent ” ? 

The very things which an artist would leave 
out, or render imperfectly, the photograph takes 
infinite care with, and so makes its illusions 
perfect. What is the picture of a drum without 
the marks on its head where the beating of the 
sticks has darkened the parchment? In three 
pictures of the Ann Hathaway Cottage, before 
us, — the most perfect, perhaps, of all the paper 
stereographs we have seen, — the door at the 
farther end of the cottage is open, and we see 
the marks left by the rubbing of hands and 
shoulders as the good people came through the 
entry, or leaned against it, or felt for the latch. 
It is not impossible that scales from the epider¬ 
mis of the trembling hand of Ann Hathaway’s 
young suitor, Will Shakespeare, are still adhe¬ 
rent about the old latch and door, and that 
they contribute to the stains we see in our 
picture. 

Among the accidents of life, as delineated in 


156 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


the stereograph, there is one that rarely fails in 
any extended view which shows us the details 
of streets and buildings. There may be neither 
man nor beast nor vehicle to be seen. You 
may be looking down on a place in such a way 
that none of the ordinary marks of its being 
actually inhabited show themselves. But in 
the rawest Western settlement and the oldest 
Eastern city, in the midst of the shanties at 
Pike’s Peak and stretching across the court¬ 
yards as you look into them from above the 
clay-plastered roofs of Damascus, wherever man 
lives with any of the decencies of civilization, 
you will find the clothes-line. It may be a 
fence, (in Ireland,) — it may be a tree, (if the 
Irish license is still allowed us,) — but clothes- 
drying, or a place to dry clothes on, the stereo¬ 
scopic photograph insists on finding, wherever 
it gives us a group of houses. This is the city 
of Berne. How it brings the people who sleep 
under that roof before us to see their sheets 
drying on that fence; and how real it makes 
the men in that house to look at their shirts 
hanging, arms down, from yonder line! 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


157 


The reader will, perhaps, thank us for a few 
hints as to the choice of stereoscopes and stereo¬ 
scopic pictures. The only way to he sure of 
getting a good instrument is to try a number 
of them, but it may be well to know which are 
worth trying. Those made with achromatic 
glasses may be as much better as they are 
dearer, but we have not been able to satisfy 
ourselves of the fact. We do not commonly 
find any trouble from chromatic aberration (or 
false color in the image). It is an excellent 
thing to have the glasses adjust by pulling 
out and pushing in, either by the hand, or, 
more conveniently, by a screw. The large 
instruments, holding twenty-five slides, are best 
adapted to the use of those who wish to show 
their views often to friends ; the owner is a 
little apt to get tired of the unvarying round 
in which they present themselves. Perhaps we 
relish them more for having a little trouble in 
placing them, as we do nuts that we crack 
better than those we buy cracked. In optical 
effect, there is not much difference between 
them and the best ordinary instruments. We 


158 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


employ one stereoscope with adjusting glasses 
for the hand, and another common one upon 
a broad rosewood stand. The stand may be 
added to any instrument, and is a great con¬ 
venience. 

Some will have none but glass stereoscopic 
pictures ; paper ones are not good enough for 
them. Wisdom dwells not with such. It is 
true that there is a brilliancy in a glass pic¬ 
ture, with a flood of light pouring through 
it, which no paper one, with the light neces¬ 
sarily falling on it, can approach. But this 
brilliancy fatigues the eye much more than 
the quiet reflected light of the paper stereo¬ 
graph. Twenty-five glass slides, well inspected 
in a strong light, are good for one headache, 
if a person is disposed to that trouble. 

Again, a good paper photograph is infi¬ 
nitely better than a bad glass one. We have 
a glass stereograph of Bethlehem, which looks 
as if the ground were covered with snow, —• 
and paper ones of Jerusalem, colored and un¬ 
colored, much superior to it both in effect and 
detail. The Oriental pictures, we think, are 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


150 


apt to have this white, patchy look ; possibly 
we do not get the best in this country. 

A good view on glass or paper is, as a 
rule, best uncolored. But some of the Amer¬ 
ican views of Niagara on glass are greatly 
improved by being colored; the water being 
rendered vastly more suggestive of the reality 
by the deep green tinge. Per contra , we have 
seen some American views so carelessly col¬ 
ored that they were all the worse for having 
been meddled with. The views of the Hath¬ 
away Cottage, before referred to, are not only 
admirable in themselves, but some of them 
are admirably colored also. Few glass stere¬ 
ographs compare with them as real represent¬ 
atives of Nature. 

In choosing stereoscopic pictures, beware of 
investing largely in groups. The owner soon 
gets tired to death of them. Two or three 
of the most striking among them are worth 
having, but mostly they are detestable, — vul¬ 
gar repetitions of vulgar models, shamming 
grace, gentility, and emotion, by the aid of 
costumes, attitudes, expressions, and accesso- 


160 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


ries worthy of a Thespian society of candle- 
snuffers. In buying brides under veils, and 
such figures, look at the lady’s hands. You 
will very probably find the young countess is 
a maid-of-all-work. The presence of a human 
figure adds greatly to the interest of all archi¬ 
tectural views, by giving us a standard of size, 
and should often decide our choice out of a 
variety of such pictures. No view pleases the 
eye which has glaring patches in it, — a per¬ 
fectly white-looking river, for instance, — or 
trees and shrubs in full leaf, but looking as 
if they were covered with snow, — or glaring 
roads, or frosted-looking stones and pebbles. 
As for composition in landscape, each person 
must consult his own taste. All have agreed 
in admiring many of the Irish views, as those 
about the Lakes of Killarney, for instance, 
which are beautiful alike in general effect and 
in nicety of detail. The glass views on the 
Rhine, and of the Pyrenees in Spain, are of 
consummate beauty. As a specimen of the 
most perfect, in its truth and union of har¬ 
mony and contrast, the view of the Circus of 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


161 


Gavarni, with the female figure on horseback 
in the front ground, is not surpassed by any 
we remember to have seen. 

What is to come of the stereoscope and the 
photograph we are almost afraid to guess, 
lest we should seem extravagant. But, pre¬ 
mising that we are to give a colored stereo¬ 
scopic mental view of their prospects, we will 
venture on a few glimpses at a conceivable, 
if not a possible future. 

Form is henceforth divorced from matter. In 
fact, matter as a visible object is of no great 
use any longer, except as the mould on which 
form is shaped. Give us a few negatives of 
a thing worth seeing, taken from different 
points of view, and that is all we want of 
it. Pull it down or burn it up, if you please. 
We must, perhaps, sacrifice some luxury in 
the loss of color; but form and light and 
shade are the great things, and even color 
can be added, and perhaps by and by may be 
got direct from Nature. 

O 

There is only one Colosseum or Pantheon ; 


162 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


but how many millions of potential negatives 
have they shed — representatives of billions 
of pictures — since they were erected ! Mat¬ 
ter in large masses must always be fixed and 
dear; form is cheap and transportable. We 
have got the fruit of creation now, and need 
not trouble ourselves with the core. Every 
conceivable object of Nature and Art will 
soon scale off its surface for us. Men will 
hunt all curious, beautiful, grand objects, as 
they hunt the cattle in South America, for 
their skins , and leave the carcasses as of little 
worth. 

The consequence of this will soon be such 
an enormous collection of forms that they will 
have to be classified and arranged in vast 
libraries, as books are now. The time will 
come when a man who wishes to see any ob¬ 
ject, natural or artificial, will go to the Impe¬ 
rial, National, or City Stereographic Library, 
and call for its skin or form, as he would for 
a book at any common library. We do now 
distinctly propose the creation of a compre¬ 
hensive and systematic stereographic library, 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


163 


where all men can find the special forms they 
particularly desire to see as artists, or as schol¬ 
ars, or as mechanics, or in any other capacity. 
Already a workman has been travelling about 
the country with stereographic view’s of furni¬ 
ture, showing his employer’s patterns in this 
w r ay, and taking orders for them. This is a 
mere hint of what is coming before long. 

Again, w r e must have special stereographic 
collections, just as we have professional and 
other special libraries. And, as a means of 
facilitating the formation of public and private 
stereographic collections, there must be ar¬ 
ranged a comprehensive system of exchanges, 
so that there may grow up something like 
a universal currency of these bank-notes, or 
promises to pay in solid substance, which the 
sun has engraved for the great Bank of Na¬ 
ture. 

To render comparison of similar objects, or 
of any that we may w r ish to see side by side, 
easy, they should be taken, so far as possible, 
with camera-lenses of the same focal length, at 
the same distance, and viewed through stereo- 


164 


THE STEREOSCOPE 


scopic lenses of the same pattern. In this way 
the eye is enabled to form the most rapid and 
exact conclusions. If the “ great elm ” and 
the Cowthorpe oak, if the State-House and 
St. Peter’s, were taken on the same scale, 
and looked at with the same magnifying power, 
we should compare them without the possi¬ 
bility of being misled by those partialities which 
might tend to make us overrate the indigenous 
vegetable and the dome of our native Michel 
Angelo. 

The next European war will send us ster¬ 
eographs of battles. It is asserted that a 
bursting shell can be photographed. The time 
is perhaps at hand when a flash of light, as 
sudden and brief as that of the lightning 
which shows a whirling wheel standing stock 
still, shall preserve the very instant of the 
shock of contact of the mighty armies that 
are even now gathering. The lightning from 
heaven does actually photograph natural ob¬ 
jects on the bodies of those it has just blasted, 
— so we are told by many witnesses. The 
lightning of clashing sabres and bayonets may 


AND THE STEREOGRAPH. 


165 


be forced to stereotype itself in a stillness as 
complete as that of the tumbling tide of Niag¬ 
ara as we see it self-pictured. 

We should be led on too far, if we devel¬ 
oped our belief as to the transformations to 
be wrought by this greatest of human tri¬ 
umphs over earthly conditions, the divorce of 
form and substance. Let our readers fill out 
a blank check on the future as they like, — 
we give our indorsement to their imaginations 
beforehand. We are looking into stereoscopes 
as pretty toys, and wondering over the photo¬ 
graph as a charming novelty; but before an¬ 
other generation has passed away, it will be 
recognized that a new epoch in the history 
of human progress dates from the time when 
He who 

“ never but in uncreated light 
Dwelt from eternity ” 

took a pencil of fire from the “ angel stand¬ 
ing in the sun,” and placed it in the hands 
of a mortal. 


SUN-PAINTING AND SUN-SCULPTURE; 


WITH A STEREOSCOPIC TRIP ACROSS THE ATLANTIC. 


HERE is one old fable which Lord Bacon, 



JL in his “ Wisdom of the Ancients,” has 
not interpreted. This is the flaying of Marsyas 
by Apollo. Everybody remembers the accepted 
version of it, namely, — that the young shepherd 
found Minerva’s flute, and was rash enough to 
enter into a musical contest with the God of 
Music. He was vanquished, of course, — and 
the story is, that the victor fastened him to a 
tree and flayed him alive. 

But the God of Song was also the God of 
Light, and a moment’s reflection reveals the 
true significance of this seemingly barbarous 
story. Apollo was pleased with his young 
rival, fixed him in position against an iron 
rest, (the tree of the fable,) and took a photo¬ 
graph, a sun-picture, of him. This thin film 


SUN-PAINTING. 


167 


or skin of light and shade was absurdly inter¬ 
preted as being the cutis , or untanned leather 
integument of the young shepherd. The human 
discovery of the art of photography enables us 
to rectify the error and restore that important 
article of clothing to the youth, as well as to 
vindicate the character of Apollo. There is 
one spot less upon the sun since the theft from 
heaven of Prometheus Daguerre and his fellow- 
adventurers has enabled us to understand the 
ancient legend. 

We are now flaying our friends and submit¬ 
ting to be flayed ourselves, every few years or 
months or days, by the aid of the trench¬ 
ant sunbeam which performed the process for 
Marsyas. All the world has to submit to it, 
— kings and queens with the rest. The mon¬ 
uments of Art and the face of Nature herself 
are treated in the same way. We lift an impal¬ 
pable scale from the surface of the Pyramids. 
We slip off from the dome of St. Peter’s that 
other imponderable dome which fitted it so 
closely that it betrays every scratch on the 
original. We skim off a thin, dry cuticle from 


168 


SUN-PAINTING 


the rapids of Niagara, and lay it on our un¬ 
moistened paper without breaking a bubble or 
losing a speck of foam. We steal a landscape 
from its lawful owners, and defy the charge of 
dishonesty. We skin the flints by the wayside, 
and nobody accuses us of meanness. 

These miracles are being worked all around 
us so easily and so cheaply that most people 
have ceased to think of them as marvels. There 
is a photographer established in every consid¬ 
erable village, — nay, one may not unfrequently 
see a photographic ambulance standing at the 
wayside upon some vacant lot where it can 
squat unchallenged in the midst of burdock 
and plantain and apple-Peru, or making a long 
halt in the middle of a common by special per¬ 
mission of the “ Selectmen.” 

We must not forget the inestimable precious¬ 
ness of the new Promethean gifts because they 
have become familiar. Think first of the privi¬ 
lege we all possess now of preserving the linea¬ 
ments and looks of those dear to us. 

“ Blest be the art which can immortalize,” 

said Cowper. But remember how few painted 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


169 


portraits really give their subjects. Recollect 
those wandering Thugs of Art whose murder¬ 
ous doings with the brush used frequently to 
involve whole families ; who passed from one 
country tavern to another, eating and painting 
their way, — feeding a week upon the landlord, 
another week upon the landlady, and two or 
three days apiece upon the children; as the 
w^alls of those hospitable edifices too frequently 
testify even to the present day. Then see what 
faithful memorials of those whom we love and 
would remember are put into our hands by the 
new art, with the most trifling expenditure of 
time and money. 

This new art is old enough already to have 
given us the portraits of infants who are now 
growing into adolescence. By and by it will 
show every aspect of life in the same individ¬ 
ual, from the earliest week to the last year of 
senility. We are beginning to see what it will 
reveal. Children grow into beauty and out of 
it. The first line in the forehead, the first 
streak in the hair are chronicled without mal¬ 
ice, but without extenuation. The footprints 


8 


170 


SUN-PAINTING 


of thought, of passion, of purpose are all treas¬ 
ured in these fossilized shadows. Family-traits 
show themselves in early infancy, die out, and 
reappear. Flitting moods which have escaped 
one pencil of sunbeams are caught by another. 
Each new picture gives us a new aspect of our 
friend; we find he had not one face, hut many. 

It is hardly too much to say, that those whom 
we love no longer leave us in dying, as they did 
of old. They remain with us just as they ap¬ 
peared in life ; they look down upon us from 
our walls; they lie upon our tables ; they rest 
upon our bosoms ; nay, if we will, we may wear 
their portraits, like signet-rings, upon our fin¬ 
gers. Our own eyes lose the images pictured 
on them. Parents sometimes forget the faces 
of their own children in a separation of a year 
or two. But the unfading artificial retina which 
has looked upon them retains their impress, and 
a fresh sunbeam lays this on the living nerve 
as if it were radiated from the breathing shape. 
How these shadows last, and how their originals 
fade away! 

What is true of the faces of our friends is still 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


171 


more true of the places we have seen and loved. 
No picture produces an impression on the im¬ 
agination to compare with a photographic tran¬ 
script of the home of our childhood, or any scene 
with which we have been long familiar. The 
very point which the artist omits, in his effort 
to produce general effect, may be exactly the 
one that individualizes the place most strongly 
to our memory. There, for instance, is a pho¬ 
tographic view of our own birthplace, and with 
it of a part of our good old neighbor’s dwelling. 
An artist would hardly have noticed a slender, 
dry, leafless stalk which traces a faint line, as 
you may see, along the front of our neighbor’s 
house next the corner. That would be nothing 
to him, — but to us it marks the stejn of the 
honeysuckle-vine, which we remember, with its 
pink and white heavy-scented blossoms, as long 
as we remember the stars in heaven. 

To this charm of fidelity in the minutest de¬ 
tails the stereoscope adds its astonishing illusion 
of solidity, and thus completes the effect which 
so entrances the imagination. Perhaps there is 
also some half-magnetic effect in the fixing of 


172 


SUN-PAINTING 


the eyes on the twin pictures, — something like 
Mr. Braid’s hypnotism , of which many of our 
readers have doubtless heard. At least the 
shutting out of surrounding objects, and the 
concentration of the whole attention, which is 
a consequence of this, produce a dream-like 
exaltation of the faculties, a kind of clairvoy¬ 
ance, in w T hich we seem to leave the body be¬ 
hind us and sail away into one strange scene 
after another, like disembodied spirits. 

“ Ah, yes,” some unimaginative reader may 
say; “ but there is no color and no motion in 
these pictures you think so lifelike; and at best 
they are but petty miniatures of the objects we 
see in Nature.” 

But color is, after all, a very secondary quality 
as compared with form. We like a good crayon 
portrait better for the most part in black and 
white than in tints of pink and blue and brow T n. 
Mr. Gibson has never succeeded in making the 
world like his flesh-colored statues. The color 
of a landscape varies perpetually, with the sea¬ 
son, with the hour of the day, with the weather, 
and as seen by sunlight or moonlight; yet our 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE . 


173 


home stirs us with its old associations, seen in 
any and every light. 

As to motion, though of course it is not pres¬ 
ent in stereoscopic pictures, except in those toy- 
contrivances which have been lately introduced, 
yet it is wonderful to see how nearly the effect 
of motion is produced by the slight difference 
of light on the water or on the leaves of trees as 
seen by the two eyes in the double-picture. 

And lastly w T ith respect to size, the illusion is 
on the part of those who suppose that the eye, 
unaided, ever sees anything but miniatures of 
objects. Here is a new experiment to convince 
those who have not reflected on the subject that 
the stereoscope shows us objects of their natural 
size. 

We had a stereoscopic view taken by Mr. 
Soule out of our parlor-window, overlooking 
the town of Cambridge, with the river and the 
bridge in the foreground. Now, placing this 
view in the stereoscope, and looking with the 
left eye at the right stereographic picture, while 
the right eye looked at the natural landscape, 
through the window where the view was taken, 


174 


SUN-PAINTING 


it was not difficult so to adjust the photographic 
and real views that one overlapped the other, 
and then it was shown that the two almost ex¬ 
actly coincided in all their dimensions. 

Another point in which the stereograph differs 
from every other delineation is in the character 
of its evidence. A simple photographic picture 
may be tampered with. A lady’s portrait has 
been known to come out of the finishing-artist’s 
room ten years younger than when it left the 
camera. But try to mend a stereograph and 
you will soon find the difference. Your marks 
and patches float above the picture and never 
identify themselves with it. We had occasion 
to put a little cross on the pavement of a double 
photograph of Canterbury Cathedral, — copying 
another stereoscopic picture where it was thus 
marked. By careful management the two cross¬ 
es were made perfectly to coincide in the field 
of vision, but the image seemed suspended above 
the pavement, and did not absolutely designate 
any one stone, as it would have done if it had 
been a part of the original picture. The impos¬ 
sibility of the stereograph’s perjuring itself is a 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


175 


curious illustration of the law of evidence. “ At 
the mouth of two witnesses , or of three, shall he 
that is worthy of death be put to death; hut at 
the mouth of one he shall not be put to death.” 
No woman may be declared youthful on the 
strength of a single photograph ; hut if the ster¬ 
eoscopic twins say she is young, let her be so 
acknowledged in the high court of chancery of 
the God of Love. 

Some two or three years since, we called the 
attention of the readers of this magazine to the 
subject of the stereoscope and the stereograph. 
Some of our expressions may have seemed ex¬ 
travagant, as if heated by the interest which a 
curious novelty might not unnaturally excite. 
We have not lost any of the enthusiasm and 
delight which that article must have betrayed. 
After looking over perhaps a hundred thousand 
stereographs and making a collection of about 
a thousand, we should feel the same excitement 
on receiving a new lot to look over and select 
from as in those early days of our experience. 
To make sure that this early interest has not 


176 


SUN-PAINTING 


cooled, let us put on record one or two con¬ 
victions of the present moment. 

First, as to the wonderful nature of the in¬ 
vention. If a strange planet should happen to 
come within hail, and one of its philosophers 
were to ask us, as it passed, to hand him the 
most remarkable material product of human 
skill, we should offer him, without a moment’s 
hesitation, a stereoscope containing an instan¬ 
taneous double-view of some great thorough¬ 
fare,— one of Mr. Anthony’s views of Broad¬ 
way, (No. 203,) for instance. 

Secondly, of all artificial contrivances for the 
gratification of human taste, we seriously ques¬ 
tion whether any offers so much, on the whole, 
to the enjoyment of the civilized races, as the 
self-picturing of Art and Nature, — with three 
exceptions: namely, dress, the most universal, 
architecture, the most imposing, and music, the 
most exciting, of factitious sources of pleasure. 

No matter whether this be an extravagance 
or an over-statement; none can dispute that we 
have a new and wonderful source of pleasure in 
the sun-picture, and especially in the solid sun- 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


177 


sculpture of the stereograph. Yet there is a 
strange indifference to it, even up to the present 
moment, among many persons of cultivation and 
taste. They do not seem to have waked up to 
the significance of the miracle which the Lord 
of Light is working for them. The cream of the 
visible creation has been skimmed off; and the 
sights which men risk their lives and spend their 
money and endure sea-sickness to behold, — the 
views of Nature and Art which make exiles of 
entire families for the sake of a look at them, and 
render “ bronchitis ” and dyspepsia, followed by 
leave of absence, endurable dispensations to so 
many worthy shepherds, — these sights, gath¬ 
ered from Alps, temples, palaces, pyramids, are 
offered you for a trifle, to carry home with you, 
that you may look at them at your leisure, by 
your fireside, with perpetual fair weather, when 
you are in the mood, without catching cold, 
without following a valet-de-place , in any order 
of succession, — from a glacier to Vesuvius, from 
Niagara to Memphis, — as long as you like, and 
breaking off as suddenly as you like; — and you, 
native of this incomparably dull planet, have 


178 


SUN-PAINTING 


hardly troubled yourself to look at this divine 
gift, which, if an angel had brought it from 
some sphere nearer to the central throne, 
would have been thought worthy of the celes¬ 
tial messenger to whom it was intrusted ! 

It seemed to us that it might possibly awaken 
an interest in some of our readers, if we should 
carry them with us through a brief stereographic 
trip, — describing, not from places, but from the 
photographic pictures of them which we have 
in our own collection. Again, those who have 
collections may like to compare their own opin¬ 
ions of particular pictures mentioned with such 
as are here expressed, and those who are buy¬ 
ing stereographs may be glad of some guidance 
in choosing. 

But the reader must remember that this trip 
gives him only a glimpse of a few scenes selected 
out of our gallery of a thousand. To visit them 
all, as tourists visit the realities, and report what 
we saw, with the usual explanations and histori¬ 
cal illustrations, would make a formidable book 
of travels. 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


179 


Before we set out, we must know something 
of the sights of our own country. At least we 
must see Niagara. The great fall shows infi¬ 
nitely best on glass. Thomson’s “ Point View, 
28,” would be a perfect picture of the Falls in 
summer, if a lady in the foreground had not 
moved her shawl while the pictures were taking, 
or in the interval between taking the two. His 
winter view, “ Terrapin Tower, 37,” is perfec¬ 
tion itself. Both he and Evans have taken fine 
views of the rapids, instantaneous , catching the 
spray as it leaped and the clouds overhead. Of 
Blondin on his rope there are numerous views; 
standing on one foot, on his head, carrying a 
man on his back, and one frightful picture, 
where he hangs by one leg, head downward, 
over the abyss. The best we have seen is 
Evans’s No. 5, a front view, where every 
muscle stands out in perfect relief, and the 
symmetry of the most unimpressible of mortals 
is finely shown. It literally makes the head 
swim to fix the eyes on some of these pic¬ 
tures. It is a relief to get away from such 
fearful sights and look up at the Old Man of 



180 


SUN-PAINTING 


the Mountain. There stands the face, without 
any humanizing help from the hand of an art¬ 
ist. Mr. Bierstadt has given it to us very well. 
Bather an imbecile old gentleman, one would 
say, with his mouth open ; a face such as one 
may see hanging about railway-stations, and, 
what is curious, a New England style of coun¬ 
tenance. Let us flit again, and just take a look 
at the level sheets of water and broken falls of 
Trenton, — at the oblong, almost squared arch 
of the Natural Bridge, — at the ruins of the 
Pemberton Mills, still smoking, — and so come 
to Mr. Barnum’s “ Historical Series.” Clark’s 
Island, with the great rock by which the Pil¬ 
grims “ rested, according to the commandment,” 
on the first Sunday, or Sabbath, as they loved to 
call it, which they passed in the harbor of Ply¬ 
mouth, is the most interesting of them all to us. 
But here are many scenes of historical interest 
connected with the great names and events of 
our past. The Washington Elm, at Cambridge, 
(through the branches of which we saw the first 
sunset we ever looked upon, from this planet, at 
least,) is here in all its magnificent drapery of 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


181 


hanging foliage. Mr. Soule has given another 
beautiful view of it, when stripped of its leaves, 
equally remarkable for the delicacy of its pen¬ 
dent, hair-like spray. 

We should keep the reader half an hour look¬ 
ing through this series, if we did not tear our¬ 
selves abruptly away from it. We are bound 
for Europe, and are to leave via New York im¬ 
mediately. 

Here we are in the main street of the great 
city. This is Mr. Anthony’s miraculous instan¬ 
taneous view in Broadway, (No. 203,) before 
referred to. It is the Oriental story of the pet¬ 
rified city made real to our eyes. The character 
of it is perhaps best shown by the use we make 
of it in our lectures, to illustrate the physiology of 
walking. Every foot is caught in its movement 
with such suddenness that it shows as clearly 
as if quite still. We are surprised to see, in one 
figure, how long the stride is, — in another, how 
much the knee is bent, — in a third, how curi¬ 
ously the heel strikes the ground before the rest 
of the foot, — in all, how singularly the body is 
accommodated to the action of walking. The 


182 


SUN-PAINTING 


facts which the brothers Weber, laborious Ger¬ 
man experimenters and observers, had carefully 
worked out on the bony frame, are illustrated 
by the various individuals comprising this mov¬ 
ing throng. But what a wonder it is, this snatch 
at the central life of a mighty city as it rushed 
by in all its multitudinous complexity of move¬ 
ment ! Hundreds of objects in this picture 
could be identified in a court of law by their 
owners. There stands Car No. 33 of the Astor 
House and Twenty-Seventh Street Fourth Ave¬ 
nue line. The old woman would miss an apple 
from that pile which you see glistening on her 
stand. The young man whose back is to us 
could swear to the pattern of his shawl. The 
gentleman between two others will no doubt 
remember that he had a headache the next 
morning, after this walk he is taking. Notice 
the caution with which the man driving the 
dapple-gray horse in a cart loaded with barrels 
holds his reins, — wide apart, one in each hand. 
See the shop-boys with their bundles, the young 
fellow with a lighted cigar in his hand, as you 
see by the way he keeps it off from his body, 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


183 


the gamin stooping to pick up something in the 
midst of the moving omnibuses, the stout philo¬ 
sophical carman sitting on his cart-tail, Newman 
Noggs by the lamp-post at the comer. Nay, 
look into Car No. 33 and you may see the pas¬ 
sengers ; — is that a young woman’s face turned 
toward you looking out of the window? See 
how the faithful sun-print advertises the rival 
establishment of “ Meade Brothers, Ambrotypes 
and Photographs.” What a fearfully suggestive 
picture ! It is a leaf torn from the book of 
God’s recording angel. What if the sky is one 
great concave mirror, which reflects the picture 
of all our doings, and photographs every act on 
which it looks upon dead and living surfaces, so 
that to celestial eyes the stones on which we 
tread are written with our deeds, and the leaves 
of the forest are but undeveloped negatives where 
our summers stand self-recorded for transfer into 
the imperishable record ? And what a meta¬ 
physical puzzle have we here in this simple¬ 
looking paradox ! Is motion hut a succession 
of rests ? AH is still in this picture of universal 
movement. Take ten thousand instantaneous 


184 


SUN-PAINTING 


photographs of the great thoroughfare in a day; 
every one of them will be as still as the tableau 
in the “ Enchanted Beauty.” Yet the hurried 
day’s life of Broadway will have been made up 
f of just such stillnesses. Motion is as rigid as 
marble, if you only take a wink’s worth of it at 
a time. 

We are all ready to embark now. Here is 
the harbor ; and there lies the Great Eastern at 
anchor, — the biggest island that ever got adrift. 
Stay one moment, — they will ask us about se¬ 
cession and the revolted States, — it may be as 
well to take a look at Charleston, for an instant, 
before we go. 

These three stereographs were sent us by a 
lady now residing in Charleston. The Battery, 
the famous promenade of the Charlestonians, 
since armed with twenty-four pounders facing 
Fort Sumter; the interior of Fort Moultrie, 
with the guns since spiked by Major Anderson ; 
and a more extensive view of the same interior, 
with the flag of the Union still flying, — the 
free end of it tied to a gun-carriage, probably 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


185 


for the convenience of the photographer, as 
one of the garrison explains it for us. In the 
distance, to the right, Fort Sumter, looking re¬ 
mote and inaccessible, — the terrible rattle which 
our foolish little spoiled sister Caroline has in¬ 
sisted on getting into her rash hand. How 
ghostly, yet how real, it looms up out of the 
dim atmosphere, — the guns looking over the 
wall and out through the embrasures, — meant 
for a foreign foe, — this very day (April 13th) 
turned in self-defence against the children of 
those who once fought for liberty at Fort Moul¬ 
trie ! It is a sad thought that there are truths 
which can he got out of life only by the destruc¬ 
tive analysis of war. Statesmen deal in proxi¬ 
mate principles , — unstable compounds; hut war 
reduces facts to their simple elements in its red- 
hot crucible, with its black flux of carbon and 
sulphur and nitre. Let us turn our back on 
this miserable, even though inevitable, fraternal 
strife, and, closing our eyes for an instant, open 
them in London. 


Here we are at the foot of Charing Cross. 


186 


SUN-PAINTING 


You remember, of course, how this fine eques¬ 
trian statue of Charles I. was condemned to be 
sold and broken up by the Parliament, but was 
buried and saved by the brazier who purchased 
it, and so reappeared after the Restoration. To 
the left, the familiar words, “ Morley’s Hotel ” 
designate an edifice about half windows, where 
the plebeian traveller may sit and contem¬ 
plate Northumberland House opposite, and the 
straight-tailed lion of the Percys surmounting 
the lofty battlement which crowns its broad 
facade. We could describe and criticise the 
statue as well as if we stood under it, but other 
travellers have done that. Where are all the 
people that ought to be seen here ? Hardly 
more than three or four figures are to be made 
out; the rest were moving, and left no images 
in this slow, old-fashioned picture, — how un¬ 
like the miraculous “ instantaneous ” Broadway 
of Mr. Anthony we were looking at a little while 
ago ! But there, on one side, an omnibus has 
stopped long enough to be caught by the sun¬ 
beams. There is a mark on it. Try it with a 
magnifier. 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE . 


187 


Charing 

+ 

Strand 

633 . 

Here are the towers of Westminster Abbey. 
A dead failure, as we well remember them,— 
miserable modern excrescences, which shame 
the noble edifice. We will hasten on, and 
perhaps by and by come back and enter the 
cathedral. 

How natural Temple Bar looks, with the 
loaded coach and the cab going through the 
central arch, and the blur of the hurrying 
throng darkening the small lateral ones ! A 
fine old structure, — always reminds a Bosto¬ 
nian of the old arch over which the mysterious 
Boston Library was said still to linger out its 
existence late into the present century. But 
where are the spikes on which the rebels’ heads 
used to grin until their jaws fell off ? One 
of Hogarth’s pictures will perhaps help us to 
answer this question which the stereograph 
leaves doubtful. To the left a woman is 
spreading an awning before a shop ; — a 
man would do it for her here. Ghost of a 


188 


SUN-PAINTING 


boy with bundle, — seen with right eye only. 
Other ghosts of passers or loiterers, — one of a 
pretty woman, as we fancy at least, by the way 
she turns her face to us. To the right, frag¬ 
ments of signs, as follows : 

22 

PAT 

CO 

BR 

PR 

What can this be but 229, Patent Combs and 
Brushes , Prout ? At any rate, we were look¬ 
ing after Prout’s good old establishment, (229, 
Strand,) which we remembered was close to 
Temple Bar, when we discovered these frag¬ 
ments, the rest being cut off by the limits of 
the picture. 

London Bridge ! Less imposing than Water¬ 
loo Bridge, but a massive pile of masonry, which 
looks as if its rounded piers would defy the 
Thames as long as those of the Bridge of 
Sant’ Angelo have stemmed the Tiber. Fig¬ 
ures indistinct or invisible, as usual, in the 
foreground, but farther on a mingled proces- 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE . 


189 


sion of coaches, cabs, carts, and people. See 
the groups in the recesses over the piers. The 
parapet is breast-high ; — a woman can climb 
over it, and drop or leap into the dark stream 
lying in deep shadow under the arches. Women 
take this leap often. The angels hear them like 
the splash of drops of blood out of the heart 
of our humanity. In the distance, wharves, 
storehouses, stately edifices, steeples, and rising 
proudly above them, “like a tall bully,” Lon¬ 
don Monument. 

Here we are, close to the Monument. Tall, 
square base, with reliefs, fluted columns, queer 
top ; — looks like an inverted wineglass with a 
shaving-brush standing up on it: representative 
of flame, probably. Below this the square cage 
in which people who have climbed the stairs are 
standing ; seems to be ten or twelve feet high, 
and is barred or wired over. Women used to 
jump off from the Monument as w^ell as from 
London Bridge, before they made the cage safe 
in this way. 

“ Holloa ! ” said a man standing in the Square 
one day, to his companion, — “ there’s the flag 
coming down from the Monument! ” 


190 


SUN-PAINTING 


“It’s no flag,” said the other; “it’s a wo¬ 
man ! ” 

Sure enough, and so it was. 

Nobody can mistake the four pepper-boxes, 
with the four weathercocks on them, surmount¬ 
ing the corners of a great square castle, a little 
way from the river’s edge. That is the Tower 
of London. We see it behind the masts of sail¬ 
ing-vessels and the chimneys of steamers, gray 
and misty in the distance. Let us come nearer 
to it. Four square towers, crowned by four 
Oriental-looking domes, not unlike the lower 
half of an inverted balloon: these towers at the 
angles of a square building with buttressed and 
battlemented walls, with two ranges of round- 
arched windows on the side towards us. But 
connected with this building are other towers, 
round, square, octagon, walls with embrasures, 
moats, loop-holes, turrets, parapets, —looking as 
if the beef-eaters really meant to hold out, if a 
new army of Boulogne should cross over some 
fine morning. We can’t stop to go in and see 
the lions this morning, for we have come in 
sight of a great dome, and we cannot take our 
eyes away from it. 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


191 


That is St. Paul’s, the Boston State-House 
of London. There is a resemblance in effect, 
but there is a difference in dimensions, — to the 
disadvantage of the native edifice, as the reader 
may see in the plate prefixed to Dr. Bigelow’s 
“ Technology.” The dome itself looks light and 
airy compared to St. Peter’s or the Duomo of 
Florence, — not only absolutely, but compara¬ 
tively. The colonnade on which it rests divides 
the honors with it. It does not brood over 
the city, as those two others over their subject 
towns. Michel Angelo’s forehead repeats itself 
in the dome of St. Peter’s. Sir Christopher had 
doubtless a less ample frontal development; 
indeed, the towers he added to Westminster 
Abbey would almost lead us to doubt if he had 
not a vacancy somewhere in his brain. But the 
dome of the London “ State-House ” is very 
graceful, —so light that it looks as if its lineage 
had been crossed by a spire. Wait until we 
have gilded the dome of our Boston St. Paul’s 
before drawing any comparisons. 

We have seen the outside of London. What 
do we care for the Crescent, and the Horse- 


192 


SUN-PAINTING 


guards, and Nelson’s Monument and the statue 
of Achilles, and the new Houses of Parliament ? 
The Abbey, the Tower, the Bridge, Temple 
Bar, the Monument, St. Paul’s : these make up 
the great features of the London we dream about. 
Let us go into the Abbey for a few moments. 
The “ dim religious light ” is pretty good, after 
all. We can read every letter on that mural 
tablet to the memory of the “ most illustrious 
and most benevolent John Paul Howard, Earl 
of Stafford,” “ a Lover of his Country, A Rela¬ 
tion to Relations ,” (what a eulogy and satire in 
that expression !) and in many ways virtuous and 
honorable, as “ The Countess Dowager, in Tes¬ 
timony of her Great Affection and Respect to 
her Lord’s Memory,” has commemorated on his 
monument. We can see all the folds of the 
Duchess of Suffolk’s dress, and the meshes of 
the net that confines her hair, as she lies in 
marble effigy on her sculptured sarcophagus. It 
looks old to our eyes, for she was the mother 
of Lady Jane Grey, and died three hundred 
years ago, — but see those two little stone 
heads lying on their stone pillow, just be- 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


193 


yond the marble Duchess. They are children 
of Edward III., — the Black Prince’s baby- 
brothers. They died five hundred years ago, 
— but what are centuries in Westminster Ab¬ 
bey ? Under the pillared canopy, her head 
raised on two stone cushions, her fair, still fea¬ 
tures bordered with the spreading cap we know' 
so well in her portraits, lies Mary of Scotland. 
These fresh monuments, protected from the wear 
of the elements, seem to make twenty genera¬ 
tions our contemporaries. Look at this husband 
warding off the dart which the grim, draped 
skeleton is aiming at the breast of his fainting 
wife. Most famous, perhaps, of all the statues 
in the Abbey is this of Joseph Gascoigne Night¬ 
ingale and his Lady, by Roubilliac. You need 
not cross the ocean to see it. It is here, liter¬ 
ally, to every dimple in the back of the falling 
hand, and every crinkle of the vermiculated 
stone-work. What a curious pleasure it is to 
puzzle out the inscriptions on the monuments in 
the background ! — for the beauty of your photo¬ 
graph is, that you may work out minute details 
with the microscope, just as you can with the 


9 


M 


194 


SUN-PAINTING 


telescope in a distant landscape in Nature. 
There is a lady, for instance, leaning upon an 
urn, — suggestive, a little, of Morgiana and the 
forty thieves. Above is a medallion of one 
wearing a full periwig. Now for a half-inch 
lens to make out the specks that seem to be 
letters. “ Erected to the Memory of William 
Pulteney, Earl of Bath, by his Brother ” — 
That will do, — the inscription operates as a 
cold bath to enthusiasm. But here is our own 
personal namesake, the once famous Rear Ad¬ 
miral of the White, whose biography we can find 
nowhere except in the “ Gentleman’s Magazine,” 
where he divides the glory of the capture of 
Quebec with General Wolfe. A handsome young 
man with hyacinthine locks, his arms bare and 
one hand resting on a cannon. We remember 
thinking our namesake’s statue one of the most 
graceful in the Abbey, and have always fallen 
back on the memory of that and of Dryden’s 
Achates of the “ Annus Mirabilis,” as trophies 
of the family. 

Enough of these marbles; there is no end to 
them; the walls and floor of the great, many- 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


195 


arched, thousand-pillared, shy-lifted cavern are 
crusted all over with them, like stalactites and 
stalagmites. The vast temple is alive with the 
images of the dead. Kings'and queens, nobles, 
statesmen, soldiers, admirals, the great men 
whose deeds w r e all know, the great writers 
whose words are in all our memories, the brave 
and the beautiful whose fame has shrunk into 
their epitaphs, are all around us. What is the 
cry for alms that meets us at the door of the 
church to the mute petition of these marble beg¬ 
gars, who ask to warm their cold memories for 
a moment in our living hearts ? Look up at the 
mighty arches overhead, borne up on tall clus¬ 
tered columns, — as if that avenue of Royal 
Palms we remember in the West India Islands 
(photograph) had been spirited over seas and 
turned into stone. Make your obeisance to the 
august shape of Sir Isaac Newton, reclining like 
a weary swain in the niche at the side of the 
gorgeous screen. Pass through Henry YII.’s 
Chapel, a temple cut like a cameo. Look at the 
shining oaken stalls of the knights. See the 
banners overhead. There is no such speaking 


196 


SUN-PAINTING 


record of the lapse of time as these banners. 
There is one of them beginning to drop to 
pieces; the long day of a century has decay 
for its dial-shadow. 

We have had a glimpse of London, — let us 
make an excursion to Stratford-on-Avon. 

Here you see the Shakespeare House as it 
was, — wedged in between, and joined to, the 
“ Swan and Maidenhead ” Tavern and a mean 
and dilapidated brick building, not much worse 
than itself, however. The first improvement 
(as you see in No. 2) was to pull down this 
brick building. The next (as you see in No. 3) 
was to take away the sign and the bay-window 
of the “ Swan and Maidenhead ” and raise two 
gables out of its roof, so as to restore something 
like its ancient aspect. Then a rustic fence was 
put up, and the outside arrangements were com¬ 
pleted. The cracked and faded sign projects as 
we remember it of old. In No. 1 you may read 
“ The Immortal .hakes \peare . . . Bom in This 
House ” about as well as if you had been at the 
trouble and expense of going there. 

But here is the back of the house. Did little 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


197 


Will use to look out at this window with the 
bull’s-eye panes ? Did he use to drink from this 
old pump, or the well in which it stands ? Did 
his shoulders rub against this angle of the old 
house, built with rounded bricks ? It is a 
strange picture, and sets us dreaming. Let us 
go in and up-stairs. In this room he was born. 
They say so, and we will believe it. Rough 
walls, rudely boarded floor, wide window with 
small panes, small bust of him between two cac¬ 
tuses in bloom on window-seat. An old table 
covered with prints and stereographs, a framed 
picture, and under it a notice “ Copies of this 

Portrait ”.the rest, in fine print, can only 

be conjectured. 

Here is the Church of the Holy Trinity, m 
which he lies buried. The trees are bare that 
surround it; see the rooks’ nests in their tops. 
The Avon is hard by, dammed just here with 
flood-gates, like a canal. Change the season, if 
you like, — here are the trees in leaf, and in 
their shadow the tombs and graves of the mute, 
inglorious citizens of Stratford. 

Ah, how natural this interior, with its great 



198 


SUN-PAINTING 


stained window, its mural monuments, and its 
slab in the pavement with the awful inscription ! 
That we cannot see here, but there is the tablet 
with the bust we know so well. But this, after 
all, is Christ’s temple, not Shakespeare’s. Here 
are the worshippers’ seats, — mark how the pol¬ 
ished wood glistens, — there is the altar, and 
there the open prayer-book, — you can almost 
read the service from it. Of the many striking 
things that Henry Ward Beecher has said, noth¬ 
ing, perhaps, is more impressive than his account 
of his partaking of the communion at that altar 
in the church where Shakespeare rests. A mem¬ 
ory more divine than his overshadowed the 
place, and he thought of Shakespeare, “ as he 
thought of ten thousand things, without the least 
disturbance of his devotion,” though he was 
kneeling directly over the poet’s dust. 

If you will stroll over to Shottery now with 
me, we can see the Ann Hathaway cottage from 
four different points, which will leave nothing 
outside of it to be seen. Better to look at than 
to live in. A fearful old place, full of small ver¬ 
tebrates that squeak and smaller articulates that 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


199 


bite, if its outward promise can be trusted. A 
thick thatch covers it like a coarse-haired hide. 
It is patched together with bricks and timber, 
and partly crusted with scaling plaster. One 
window has the diamond panes framed in lead, 
such as we remember seeing of old in one or two 
ancient dwellings in the town of Cambridge, 
hard by. In this view a young man is sitting, 
pensive, on the steps which Master William, too 
ardent lover, used to climb with hot haste and 
descend with lingering delay. Young men die, 
but youth lives. Life goes on in the cottage just 
as it used to three hundred years ago. On the 
rail before the door sits the puss of the house¬ 
hold, of the fiftieth generation, perhaps, from 
that “ harmless, necessary cat ” which purred 
round the poet’s legs as he sat talking love with 
Ann Hathaway. At the foot of the steps is a 
huge basin, and over the rail hangs — a dish¬ 
cloth, drying. In these homely accidents of the 
very instant, that cut across our romantic ideals 
with the sharp edge of reality, lies one of the 
ineffable charms of the sun-picture. It is a little 
thing that gives life to a scene or a face; por- 


200 


SUN-PAINTING 


traits are never absolutely alive, because they 
do not winJc. 

Come, we are full of Shakespeare ; let us go 
up among the hills and see where another poet 
lived and lies. Here is Rydal Mount, the home 
of Wordsworth. Two-storied, ivy-clad, hedge- 
girdled, dropped into a crease among the hills 
that look down dimly from above, as if they 
were hunting after it as ancient dames hunt 
after a dropped thimble. In these walks he 
used to go “ booing about,” as his rustic neigh¬ 
bor had it, — reciting his own verses. Here is 
his grave in Grasmere. A plain slab, with 
nothing but his name. Next him lies Dora, 
his daughter, beneath a taller stone bordered 
with a tracery of ivy, and bearing in relief a 
lamb and a cross. Her husband lies next in the 
range. The three graves have just been shorn 
of their tall grass, — in this other view you may 
see them half hidden by it. A few flowering 
stems have escaped the scythe in the first pic¬ 
ture, and nestle close against the poet’s head¬ 
stone. Hard by sleeps poor Hartley Coleridge, 
with a slab of freestone graven with a cross and 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


201 


a crown of thorns, and the legend, “ By thy 
Cross and Passion, Good Lord, deliver us.” * 
All around are the graves of those whose names 
the world has not known. This view (302), 
from above Rydal Mount, is so Claude-like, es¬ 
pecially in its trees, that one wants the solemn 
testimony of the double-picture to believe it an 
actual transcript of Nature. Of the other Eng¬ 
lish landscapes we have seen, one of the most 
pleasing on the whole is that marked 43,— 
Sweden Bridge, near Amhleside. But do not 
fail to notice St. Mary’s Church (101) in the 
same mountain-village. It grows out of the 
ground like a crystal, with spur-like gables bud¬ 
ding out all the way up its spire, as if they were 
ready to flow^er into pinnacles, like such as have 
sprung up all over the marble multiflora of 
Milan. 

And as we have been looking at a steeple, let 
us flit away for a moment and pay our rever- 

* Miss Martineau, who went to his funeral, and may be sup¬ 
posed to describe after a visit to the churchyard, gives the 
inscription incorrectly. See Atlantic Monthly for May, 1861, 
p. 552. Tourists cannot be trusted; stereographs can. 

9* 


202 


SUN-PAINTING 


ence at the foot of the tallest spire in England,— 
that of Salisbury Cathedral. Here we see it 
from below, looking up, — one of the most 
striking pictures ever taken. Look well at it; 
Chichester has just fallen, and this is a good 
deal like it, — some have thought raised by the 
same builder. It has bent somewhat (as you 
may see in these other views) from the perpen¬ 
dicular ; and though it has been strengthened 
with clamps and framework, it must crash some 
day or other, for there has been a great giant 
tugging at it day and night for five hundred 
years, and it will at last shut up into itself or 
topple over with a sound and thrill that will 
make the dead knights and bishops shake on 
their stone couches, and be remembered all their 
days by year-old children. This is the first 
cathedral we ever saw, and none ever so im¬ 
pressed us since. Vast, simple, awful in dimen¬ 
sions and height, just beginning to grow tall at 
the point where our proudest steeples taper out, 
it fills the whole soul, pervades the vast land¬ 
scape over which it reigns, and, like Niagara 
and the Alps, abolishes that five or six foot 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


203 


personality in the beholder which is fostered by 
keeping company with the little life of the day 
in its little dwellings. In the Alps your voice 
is as the piping of a cricket. Under the sheet 
of Niagara the beating of your heart seems too 
trivial a movement to take reckoning of. In 
the buttressed hollow of one of these palaeozoic 
cathedrals you are ashamed of your ribs, and 
blush for the exiguous pillars of bone on which 
your breathing structure reposes. Before we 
leave Salisbury, let us look for a moment into 
its cloisters. A green court-yard, with a cov¬ 
ered gallery on its level, opening upon it through 
a series of Gothic arches. You may learn 
more, young American, of the difference be¬ 
tween your civilization and that of the Old 
World by one look at this than from an average 
lyceum-lecture an hour long. Seventy years of 
life means a great deal to you ; how little, com¬ 
paratively, to the dweller in these cloisters! 
You will have seen a city grow up about you, 
perhaps ; your whole world will have been 
changed half a dozen times over. What change 
for him ? The cloisters are just as when he 


204 


SUN-PAINTING 


entered them, —just as they were a hundred 
years ago, —just as they will be a hundred 
years hence. 

These old cathedrals are beyond all compari¬ 
son what are best worth seeing, of man’s handi¬ 
work, in Europe. How great the delight to be 
able to bring them, bodily, as it were, to our 
own firesides ! A hundred thousand pilgrims a 
year used to visit Canterbury. Now Canter¬ 
bury visits us. See that small white mark on 
the pavement. That marks the place where the 
slice of Thomas a Becket’s skull fell when Reg¬ 
inald Fitz Urse struck it off with a “ Ha ! ” that 
seems to echo yet through the vaulted arches. 
And see the broad stairs, worn by the pilgrim’s 
knees as they climbed to the martyr’s shrine. 
For four hundred years this stream of worship¬ 
pers was wearing itself into these stones. But 
there was the place where they knelt before the 
altar called “ Becket’s Crown.” No ! the story 
that those deep hollows in the marble were made 
by the pilgrims’ knees is too much to believe, — 
but there are the hollows and that is the story. 

And now, if you would see a perfect gem of 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


205 


the art of photography, and at the same time an 
unquestioned monument of antiquity which no 
person can behold without interest, look upon 
this, — the monument of the Black Prince. 
There is hardly a better piece of work to be 
found. His marble effigy lies within a railing, 
with a sculptured canopy hung over it, like a 
sounding-board. Above this, on a beam stretched 
between two pillars, hang the arms he wore at 
the battle of Poitiers, — the tabard, the shield, 
the helmet, the gauntlets, and the sheath that 
held his sword, which weapon it is said that 
Cromwell carried off. The outside casing of 
the shield has broken away, as you observe, but 
the lions or lizards, or whatever they were 
meant for, and the flower-de-luces or plumes 
may still be seen. The metallic scales, if such 
they were, have partially fallen from the tab¬ 
ard or frock, and the leather shows bare in 
parts of it. 

Here, hard by, is the sarcophagus of Henry 
IY. and his queen, also enclosed with a railing 
like the other. It was opened about thirty 
years ago in presence of the dean of the cathe- 


206 


SUN-PAINTING 


dral. There was a doubt, so it is said, as to 
the monarch’s body having been really buried 
there. Curiosity had nothing to do with it, it 
is to be presumed. Every over-ground sar¬ 
cophagus is opened sooner or later, as a matter 
of course. It was hard work to get it open ; 
it had to be sawed. They found a quantity of 
hay , — fresh herbage, perhaps, when it was laid 
upon the royal body four hundred years ago, — 
and a cross of twigs. A silken mask was on 
the face. They raised it, and saw his red beard, 
his features well preserved, a gap in the front 
teeth, which there was probably no court-dentist 
to supply, — the same face the citizens looked 
on four centuries ago 

“ In London streets that coronation-day, 

When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary ”; 

then they covered him up to take another nap 
of a few centuries, until another dean has an 
historical doubt, — at last, perhaps, to be trans¬ 
ported by some future Australian Bamum to 
the Sidney Museum and exhibited as the mum¬ 
my of one of the English Pharaohs. Look, 
too, at the “ Warrior’s Chapel,” in the same 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


207 


cathedral. It is a very beautiful stereograph, 
and may be studied for a long time, for it is full 
of the most curious monuments. 

Before leaving these English churches and 
monuments let us enter, if but for a moment, 
the famous Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick. 
The finest of the views (323, 324) recalls that 
of the Black Prince’s tomb, as a triumph of 
photography. Thus, while the whole effect 
of the picture is brilliant and harmonious, we 
shall find, on taking a lens, that we can count 
every individual head in the chaplet of the 
monk who is one of the more conspicuous re¬ 
liefs on the sarcophagus. The figure of this monk 
itself is about half an inch in height, and its 
face may be completely hidden by the head of a 
pin. The whole chapel is a marvel of work¬ 
manship and beauty. The monument of Rich¬ 
ard Beauchamp in the centre, with the frame 
of brass over the recumbent figure, intended to 
support the drapery thrown upon it to protect, 
the statue, — with the mailed shape of the 
warrior, his feet in long pointed shoes resting 
against the muzzled bear and the griffin, his 


208 


SUN-PAINTING 


hands raised, but not joined, — this monument, 
with the tomb of Dudley, Earl of Leicester, —- 
Elizabeth’s Leicester, — and that of the other 
Dudley, Earl of Warwick, — all enchased in 
these sculptured walls, and illuminated through 
that pictured window, where we can dimly see 
the outlines of saints and holy maidens, — form 
a group of monumental jewels such as only 
Henry VII.’s Chapel can equal. For these two 
pictures (323 and 324) let the poor student 
pawn his outside coat, if he cannot have them 
otherwise. 

Of abbeys and castles there is no end. No. 
4, Tintern Abbey, is the finest, on the whole, 
we have ever seen. No. 2 is also very perfect 
and interesting. In both, the masses of ivy 
that clothe the ruins are given with wonderful 
truth and effect. Some of these views have the 
advantage of being very well colored. War¬ 
wick Castle (81) is one of the best and most 
interesting of the series of castles; Caernarvon 
is another still more striking. 

We may as well break off here as anywhere, 
so far as England is concerned. England is 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


209 


one great burial-ground to an American. As 
islands are built up out of the shields of insects, 
so her soil is made from the bones of her in¬ 
numerable generations. No one but a travelled 
American feels what it is to live in a land of 
monuments. We are all born foundlings, ex¬ 
cept here and there, in some favored spot, 
where humanity has nestled for a century or 
two. Cut flowers of romance and poetry stuck 
about are poor substitutes for the growths which 
have their roots in an old soil that has been 
changing elements with men and women like 
ourselves for thousands of years. Perhaps it is 
well that we should be forced to live mainly 
for the future; but it is sometimes weary and 
prosaic. 

And yet, — open this enchanted door (of 
pasteboard) which is the entrance to the land 
of Burns, and see what one man can do to 
idealize and glorify the common life about him ! 
Here is a poor “ ten-footer,” as we should call 
it, the cottage William “ Burness ” built with his 
own hands, where he carried his young bride 
Agnes, and where the boy Robert, his first- 

N 


210 


SUN-PAINTING 


born, was given to the light and air which he 
made brighter and freer for mankind. Sit still 
and do not speak, — but see that your eyes do 
not grow dim as these pictures pass before 
them: The old hawthorn under which Burns 
sat with Highland Mary, — a venerable duenna¬ 
like tree, with thin arms and sharp elbows, and 
scanty chevelure of leaves ; the Auld Brig o’ 
Doon (No. 4), — a daring arch that leaps the 
sweet stream at a bound, more than half clad in 
a mantle of ivy, which has crept with its larva¬ 
like feet beyond the key-stone; the Twa Brigs 
of Ayr, with the beautiful reflections in the 
stream that shines under their eyebrow-arches ; 
and poor little Alloway Kirk, with its fallen 
roof and high gables. Lift your hand to your 
eyes and draw a long breath, — for what words 
would come so near to us as these pictured, nay, 
real, memories of the dead poet who made a 
nation of a province, and the hearts of mankind 
its tributaries. 

And so we pass to many-towered and turret- 
ed and pinnacled Abbotsford, and to large- 
windowed Melrose, and to peaceful Dry burgh, 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


211 


where, under a plain bevelled slab, lies the great 
Romancer whom Scotland holds only second in 
her affections to her great poet. Here in the 
foreground of the Melrose Abbey view (436) is 
a gravestone which looks as if it might be de¬ 
ciphered with a lens. Let us draw out this 
inscription from the black archives of oblivion. 
Here it is : — 

In Memory of 
Francis Cornel, late 
Labourer in Greenwell, 

Who died 11 th July, 1827, 
aged 89 years. Also 
Margaret Betty, his 
Spouse, who died 2 d Dec', 

1831, aged 89 years. 

This is one charm, as we have said over and 
over, of the truth-telling photograph. We who 
write in great magazines of course float off from 
the -wreck of our century, on our life-preserving 
articles, to immortality. What a delight it is to 
snatch at the unknown head that shows for an 
instant through the wave, and drag it out to 
personal recognition and a share in our own 
sempiternal buoyancy! Go and be photo- 


212 


SUN-PAINTING 


graphed on the edge of Niagara, O unknown 
aspirant for human remembrance! Do not 
throw yourself, O traveller, into Etna, like Em¬ 
pedocles, but be taken by the camera standing 
on the edge of the crater! Who is that lady in 
the carriage at the door of Burns’s cottage? 
Who is that gentleman in the shiny hat on the 
sidewalk in front of the Shakespeare house? 
Who are those two fair youths lying dead on a 
heap of dead at the trench’s side in the cemetery 
of Melegnano, in that ghastly glass stereograph 
in our friend Dr. Bigelow’s collection ? Some 
Austrian mother has perhaps seen her boy’s 
features in one of those still faces. All these 
seemingly accidental figures are not like the 
shapes put in by artists to fill the blanks in their 
landscapes, but real breathing persons, or forms 
that have but lately been breathing, not found 
there by chance, but brought there with a pur¬ 
pose, fulfilling some real human errand, or at 
least, as in the last-mentioned picture, waiting to 
be buried. 

Before quitting the British Islands, it would 
be pleasant to wander through the beautiful 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


213 


Yale of Avoca in Ireland, and to look on 
those many exquisite landscapes and old ruins 
and crosses which have been so admirably ren¬ 
dered in the stereograph. There is the Giant’s 
Causeway, too, which our friend Mr. Waterston 
showed us in his Museum of Art in Chester 
Square before we had been able to obtain it. 
This we cannot stop to look at now, nor these 
many objects of historical or poetical interest 
which lie before us on our own table. Such are 
the pictures of Croyland Abbey, where they 
kept that jolly drinking-horn of “ Witlaf, King 
of the Saxons,” which Longfellow has made 
famous; Bedd-Gelert, the grave of the faithful 
hound immortalized by—nay, who has immor¬ 
talized— William Spencer; the stone that marks 
the spot wdiere William Rufus fell by Tyrrel’s 
shaft; the Lion’s Head in Dove Dale, fit to be 
compared with our own Old Man of the Moun¬ 
tain; the “ Bowder Stone,” or the great boulder 
of Borrowdale; and many others over which 
we love to dream at idle moments. 

When we began these notes of travel we 
meant to take our fellow-voyagers over the con- 


214 


SUN-PAINTING 


tinent of Europe, and perhaps to all the quarters 
of the globe. We should make a book, instead 
of an article, if we attempted it. Let us, in¬ 
stead of this, devote the remaining space to an 
enumeration of a few of the most interesting 
pictures we have met with, many of which may 
be easily obtained by those who will take the 
trouble we have taken to find them. 

Views of Paris are everywhere to he had, 
good and cheap. The finest illuminated or 
transparent paper view we have ever seen is 
one of the Imperial Throne. There is another 
illuminated view, the Palace of the Senate, 
remarkable for the beauty with which it gives 
the frescoes on the cupola. We have a most 
interesting stereograph of the Amphitheatre of 
Nismes, with a bull-fight going on in its arena 
at the time when the picture was taken. The 
contrast of the vast Roman structure, with its 
massive arched masonry, and the scattered 
assembly, which seems almost lost in the spaces 
once filled by the crowd of spectators who 
thronged to the gladiatorial shows, is one of the 
most striking we have ever seen. At Quim- 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


215 


per!6 is a house so like the curious old building 
lately removed from Dock Square in Boston, 
that it is commonly taken for it at the first view. 
The Roman tombs at Arles and the quaint 
streets at Troyes are the only other French pic¬ 
tures we shall speak of, apart from the cathedrals 
to be mentioned. 

Of the views in Switzerland, it may he said 
that the Glaciers are perfect, in the glass pic¬ 
tures, at least. Waterfalls are commonly poor : 
the water glares and looks like cotton-wool. 
Staubbach, with the Yale of Lauterbrunnen, is 
an exquisite exception. Here are a few signal 
specimens of Art. No. 4018, Seelisberg, — un¬ 
surpassed by any glass stereograph we have ever 
seen in all the qualities that make a faultless 
picture. No. 4119, Mont Blanc from Sta. Rosa, 
— the finest view of the mountain for general 
effect we have met with. No. 4100, Suspension- 
Bridge of Fribourg, — very fine, but makes one 
giddy to look at it. Three different views of 
Goldau, where the villages lie buried under these 
vast masses of rock, recall the terrible catastro¬ 
phe of 1806, as if it had happened but yesterday. 


216 


SUN-PAINTING 


Almost everything from Italy is interesting. 
The ruins of Rome, the statues of the Vatican, 
the great churches, all pass before us, but in a 
flash, as we are expressed by them on our ideal, 
locomotive. Observe: next to snow and ice, 
stone is best rendered in the stereograph. Stat¬ 
ues are given absolutely well, except where 
there is much foreshortening to he done, as in 
this of the Torso, where you see the thigh is 
unnaturally lengthened. See the mark on the 
Dying Gladiator’s nose. That is where Mi¬ 
chel Angelo mended it. There is Hawthorne’s 
Marble Faun (the one called of Praxiteles), 
the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, the Young 
Athlete with the Strigil, the Forum, the Cloaca 
Maxima, the Palace of the Caesars, the bronze 
Marcus Aurelius, — those wonders all the world 
flocks to see, — the God of Light has multiplied 
them all for you, and you have only to give a 
paltry fee to his servant to own in fee-simple 
the best sights that earth has to show. 

But look in at Pisa one moment, not for the 
Leaning Tower and the other familiar objects, 
but for the interior of the Campo Santo, with its 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE . 


217 


holy earth, its innumerable monuments, and the 
fading frescos on its walls, — see ! there are 
the Three Kings of Andrea Orgagna. And 
there hang the broken chains that once, centu¬ 
ries ago, crossed the Arno, — standing off from 
the wall, so that it seems as if they might clank, 
if you jarred the stereoscope. Tread with us the 
streets of Pompeii for a moment; there are the 
ruts made by the chariots of eighteen hundred 
years ago, — it is the same thing as stooping 
down and looking at the pavement itself. And 
here is the amphitheatre out of which the Pom¬ 
peians trooped when the ashes began to fall 
round them from Vesuvius. Behold the fa¬ 
mous gates of the Baptistery at Florence,— 
but do not overlook the exquisite iron gates of 
the railing outside ; think of them as you enter 
our own Common in Boston from West Street, 
through those portals which are fit for the gates 
of — not paradise. Look at this sugar-temple, 
— no, it is of marble, and is the monument of 
one of the Scalas at Verona. What a place for 
ghosts that vast ‘palazzo behind it! Shall we 
stand in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, and 


218 


SUN-PAINTING 


then take this stereoscopic gondola and go 
through it from St. Mark’s to the Arsenal ? 
Not now. We will only look at the Cathedral, 
— all the pictures under the aiches show in our 
glass stereograph, — at the Bronze Horses, the 
Campanile, the Rialto, and that glorious old 
statue of Bartholomew Colleoni, — the very 
image of what a partisan leader should be, the 
broad-shouldered, slender-waisted, stern-featured 
old soldier who used to leap into his saddle in 
full armor, and whose men would never follow 
another leader when he died. Well, but there 
have been soldiers in Italy since his day. Here 
are the encampments of Napoleon’s army in the 
recent campaign. This is the battle-field of 
Magenta with its trampled grass and splintered 
trees, and the fragments of soldiers’ accoutre¬ 
ments lying about. 

And here (leaving our own collection for our 
friend’s before-mentioned) here is the great 
trench in the cemetery of Melegnano, and the 
heap of dead lying unburied at its edge. Look 
away, young maiden and tender child, for this is 
what war leaves after it. Flung together, like 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


219 


sacks of grain, some terribly mutilated, some 
without mark of injury, all or almost all with a 
still, calm look on their faces. The two youths 
before referred to lie in the foreground, so sim¬ 
ple-looking, so like boys who had been over¬ 
worked and were lying down to sleep, that one 
can hardly see the picture for the tears these 
two fair striplings bring into the eyes. 

The Pope must bless us before we leave 
Italy. See, there he stands on the balcony of 
St. Peter’s, and a vast crowd before him with 
uncovered heads as he stretches his arms and 
pronounces his benediction. 

Before entering Spain we must look at the 
Circus of Gavarni, a natural amphitheatre in 
the Pyrenees. It is the most picturesque of 
stereographs, and one of the best. As for the 
Alhambra, we can show that in every aspect; 
and if you do not vote the lions in the court of 
the same a set of mechanical h****gs and nurs¬ 
ery bugaboos, we have no skill in entomology. 
But the Giralda, at Seville, is really a grand 
tower, worth looking at. The Seville Boston- 
folks consider it the linchpin, at least of this 


220 


SUN-PAINTING 


rolling universe. And what a fountain this is 
in the Infanta’s garden! what shameful beasts, 
swine and others, lying about on their stomachs! 
the whole surmounted by an unclad gentleman 
squeezing another into the convulsions of a gal¬ 
vanized frog! Queer tastes they have in the 
Old World. At the fountain of the Ogre in 
Berne, the giant, or large-mouthed private per¬ 
son, upon the top of the column, is eating a 
little infant as one eats a radish, and has plenty 
more, — a whole bunch of such, — in his hand, 
or about him. 

A voyage down the Rhine shows us nothing 
better than St. Goar (No. 2257), every house 
on each bank clean and clear as a crystal. The 
Heidelberg views are admirable; — you see a 
slight streak in the background of this one: we 
remember seeing just such a streak from the 
castle itself, and being told that it was the 
Rhine, just visible, afar off. The man with the 
geese in the goose-market at Nuremberg gives 
stone, iron, and bronze, each in perfection. 

So we come to quaint Holland, where we see 
wind-mills, ponts-levis , canals, galiots, houses 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


221 


with gable-ends to the streets and little mirrors 
outside the windows, slanted so as to show the 
frows inside what is going on. 

We must give up the cathedrals, after all: 
Santa Maria del Fiore, with Brunelleschi’s 
dome, which Michel Angelo would n’t copy 
and could n’t beat; Milan, aflame with statues, 
like a thousand-tapered candelabrum; Tours, 
with its embroidered portal, so like the lace of 
an archbishop’s robe; even Notre Dame of 
Paris, with its new spire; Rouen, Amiens, 
Chartres,—we must give them all up. 

Here we are at Athens, looking at the but¬ 
tressed Acropolis and the ruined temples, — the 
Doric Parthenon, the Ionic Erechtheum, the 
Corinthian temple of Jupiter, and the beautiful 
Caryatides. But see those steps cut in the nat¬ 
ural rock. Up those steps walked the Apostle 
Paul, and from that summit, Mars Hill, the 
Areopagus, he began his noble address, “ Ye 
men of Athens ! ” 

The Great Pyramid and the Sphinx! Herod¬ 
otus saw them a little fresher, but of unknown 
antiquity, — far more unknown to him than to 


222 


SUN-PAINTING 


us. The Colossi of the plain! Mighty mon¬ 
uments of an ancient and proud civilization 
standing alone in a desert now. 

My name is Osymandyas, King of Kings : 

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair 1 

But nothing equals these vast serene faces of 
the Pharaohs on the great rock-temple of Abou 
Simbel (Ipsambul) (No. 1, F. 307). It is the 
sublimest of stereographs, as the temple of Kar- 
dasay, this loveliest of views on glass, is the 
most poetical. But here is the crocodile lying 
in wait for us on the sandy bank of the Nile, 
and we must leave Egypt for Syria. 

Damascus makes but a poor show, with its 
squalid houses, and glaring clayed roofs. We 
always wanted to invest in real estate there in 
Abraham Street or Noah Place, or some of its 
well-established thoroughfares, but are discour¬ 
aged since we have had these views of the old 
town. Baalbec does better. See the great 
stones built into the Avail there, — the biggest 
64 X 13 X 13 ! What do you think of that ? — 
a single stone bigger than both your parlors 
thrown into one, and this one of three almost 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


223 


alike, built into a wall as if just because they 
happened to be lying round, handy ! So, then, 
we pass on to Bethlehem, looking like a fortress 
more than a town, all stone and very little win¬ 
dow, — to Nazareth, with its brick, oven-like 
houses, its tall minaret, its cypresses, and the 
black-mouthed, open tombs, with masses of cac¬ 
tus growing at their edge, — to Jerusalem, — to 
the Jordan, every drop of whose waters seems 
to carry a baptismal blessing, — to the Dead 
Sea, — and to the Cedars of Lebanon. Almost 
everything may have changed in these hallowed 
places, except the face of the stream and the 
lake, and the outlines of hill and valley. But as 
we look across the city to the Mount of Olives, 
we know that these lines which run in graceful 
curves along the horizon are the same that He 
looked upon as he turned his eyes sadly over 
Jerusalem. We know that these long declivi¬ 
ties, beyond Nazareth, were pictured in the eyes 
of Mary’s growing boy just as they are now 
ours sitting here by our own firesides. 

This is no toy, which thus carries us into the 


224 


SUN-PAINTING 


very presence of all that is most inspiring to the 
soul in the scenes which the world’s heroes and 
martyrs, and more than heroes, more than mar¬ 
tyrs, have hallowed and solemnized by looking 
upon. It is no toy: it is a divine gift, placed in 
our hands nominally by science, really by that 
inspiration which is revealing the Almighty 
through the lips of the humble students of 
Nature. Look through it once more before 
laying it down, but not at any earthly sight. In 
these views, taken through the telescopes of De 
la Rue of London and of Mr. Rutherford of 
New York, and that of the Cambridge Observa¬ 
tory by Mr. Whipple of Boston, we see the 
“ spotty globe ” of the moon with all its moun¬ 
tains and chasms, its mysterious craters and 
groove-like valleys. This magnificent stereo¬ 
graph by Mr. Whipple was taken, the first pic¬ 
ture February 7th, the second April 6th. In 
this way the change of position gives the solid 
effect of the ordinary stereoscopic views, and the 
sphere rounds itself out so perfectly to the eye 
that it seems as if we could grasp it like an 
orange. 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


225 


If the reader is interested, or like to become 
interested, in the subject of sun-sculpture and 
stereoscopes, he may like to know what the last 
two years have taught us as to the particular 
instruments best worth owning. We will give 
a few words to the subject. Of simple instru¬ 
ments, for looking at one slide at a time, Smith 
and Beck’s is the most perfect we have seen, 
but the most expensive. For looking at paper 
slides, which are light, an instrument which 
may be held in the hand is very convenient. 
We have had one constructed which is better, 
as we think, than any in the shops. Mr. Joseph 
L. Bates, 129 Washington Street, has one of 
them, if any person is curious to see it. In 
buying the instruments which hold many slides, 
we should prefer two that hold fifty to one that 
holds a hundred. Becker’s small instrument, 
containing fifty paper slides, back to back, is the 
one we like best for these slides, but the top 
should be arranged so as to come off, — the first 
change we made in our own after procuring it. 

We are allowed to mention the remarkable 
instrument contrived by our friend Dr. H. J. 

10* 


o 


226 


SUN-PAINTING 


Bigelow, for holding fifty glass slides. The 
spectator looks in : all is darkness. He turns a 
crank : the gray dawn of morning steals over 
some beautiful scene, or the facade of a stately 
temple. Still, as he turns, the morning bright¬ 
ens through various tints of rose and purple, 
until it reaches the golden richness of high 
noon. Still turning, all at once night shuts 
down upon the picture as at a tropical sunset, 
suddenly, without blur or gradual dimness,— 
the sun of the picture going down, 

“ Not as in Northern climes obscurely bright, 

But one unclouded blaze of living light.” 

We have not thanked the many friendly 
dealers in these pictures, who have sent us 
heaps and hundreds of stereographs to look over 
and select from, only because they are too many 
to thank. Nor do we place any price on this 
advertisement of their most interesting branch 
of business. But there are a few stereographs 
we wish some of them would send us, with the 
bill for the same; such as Antwerp and Stras¬ 
bourg Cathedrals, — Bologna, with its brick 
towers, — the Lions of Mycenae, if they are to 


AND SUN-SCULPTURE. 


227 


be had, — the Walls of Fiesole, — the Golden 
Candlestick in the Arch of Titus, — and others 
which we can mention, if consulted; some of 
which we have hunted for a long time in vain. 
But we write principally to wake up an interest 
in a new and inexhaustible source of pleasure, 
and only regret that the many pages we have 
filled can do no more than hint the infinite 
resources which the new art has laid open 
to us all. 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


F 'EW of those who seek a photographer’s 
establishment to have their portraits taken 
know at all into what a vast branch of com¬ 
merce this business of sun-picturing has grown. 
We took occasion lately to visit one of the 
principal establishments in the country, that 
of Messrs. E. & H. T. Anthony, in Broad¬ 
way, New York. We had made the acquaint¬ 
ance of these gentlemen through the remarka¬ 
bly instantaneous stereoscopic views published 
by them, qnd of which we spoke in a former 
article in terms which some might think ex¬ 
travagant. Our unsolicited commendation of 
these marvellous pictures insured us a more 
than polite reception. Every detail of the 
branches of the photographic business to which 
they are more especially devoted was freely 



DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


229 


shown us, and “No Admittance” over the 
doors of their inmost sanctuaries came to mean 
for us, “Walk in; you are heartily welcome.” 

We should be glad to tell our readers of all 
that we saw in the two establishments of theirs 
which we visited, but this would take the whole 
space which we must distribute among several 
subdivisions of a subject that offers many points 
of interest. We must confine ourselves to a 
few glimpses and sketches. 

The guests of the neighboring hotels, as they 
dally with their morning’s omelet, little imagine 
what varied uses come out of the shells which 
furnished them their anticipatory repast of dis¬ 
appointed chickens. If they had visited Mr. 
Anthony’s upper rooms, they would have seen 
a row of young women before certain broad, 
shallow pans filled with the glairy albumen 
which once enveloped those potential fowls. 

The one next us takes a large sheet of photo¬ 
graphic paper (a paper made in Europe for 
this special purpose, very thin, smooth, and 
compact), and floats it evenly on the surface 


230 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


of the albumen. Presently she lifts it very 
carefully by the turned-up corners and hangs 
it bias , as a seamstress might say, that is, cor- 
nerwise, on a string, to dry. This “ albumen- 
ized ” paper is sold most extensively to photo¬ 
graphers, who find it cheaper to buy than 
to prepare it. It keeps for a long time unin¬ 
jured, and is “ sensitized” when wanted, as 
we shall see by and by. 

The amount of photographic paper which is 
annually imported from France and Germany 
has been estimated at fifteen thousand reams. 
Ten thousand native partlets — 

“ Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves ” — 

cackle over the promise of their inchoate off¬ 
spring, doomed to perish unfeathered, before 
fate has decided whether they shall cluck or 
crow, for the sole use of the minions of the 
sun and the feeders of the caravanseras. 

In another portion of the same establishment 
are great collections of the chemical substances 
used in photography. To give an idea of the 
scale on which these are required, we may 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


231 


state that the estimate of the annual consump¬ 
tion of the precious metals for photographic 
purposes, in this country, is set down at ten 
tons for silver and half a ton for gold. Vast 
quantities of the hyposulphite of soda, which, 
we shall see, plays an important part in the 
process of preparing the negative plate and fin¬ 
ishing the positive print, are also demanded. 

In another building, provided with steam- 
power, which performs much of the labor, is 
carried on the great work of manufacturing 
photographic albums, cases for portraits, parts 
of cameras, and of printing pictures from neg¬ 
atives. Many of these branches of work are 
very interesting. The luxurious album, em¬ 
bossed, clasped, gilded, resplendent as a tropical 
butterfly, goes through as many transformations 
as a “ purple emperor. ” It begins a paste¬ 
board larva, is swathed and pressed and glued 
into the condition of a chrysalis, and at last 
alights on the centre-table gorgeous in gold and 
velvet, the perfect imago. The cases for por¬ 
traits are made in lengths, and cut up, some¬ 
what as they say ships are built in Maine, a 


232 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


mile at a time, to be afterwards sawed across 
so as to become sloops, schooners, or such other 
sized craft as may happen to be wanted. 

Each single process in the manufacture of 
elaborate products of skill oftentimes seems and 
is very simple. The workmen in large estab¬ 
lishments, where labor is greatly subdivided, be¬ 
come wonderfully adroit in doing a fraction of 
something. They always remind us of the Chi¬ 
nese or the old Egyptians. A young person 
who mounts photographs on cards all day long 
confessed to having never, or almost never, seen 
a negative developed, though standing at the 
time within a few feet of the dark closet where 
the process was going on all day long. One 
forlorn individual will perhaps pass his days in 
the single work of cleaning the glass plates for 
negatives. Almost at his elbow is a toning 
bath, but he would think it a good joke, if you 
asked him whether a picture had lain long 
enough in the solution of gold or hyposulphite. 

We always take a glance at the literature 
which is certain to adorn the 'walls in the neiodi- 

V O 

borhood of each operative’s bench or place for 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


233 


work. Our friends in the manufactory we are 
speaking of were not wanting in this respect. 
One of the girls had pasted on the wall before 
her, 

“ Kind words can never die.” 

It would not have been easy to give her a harsh 
one after reading her chosen maxim. “ The 
Moment of Parting ” was twice noticed. “ The 
Haunted Spring,” “ Dearest May,” “ The Bony 
Boat,” “ Yankee Girls,” “ Yankee Ship and 
Yankee Crew,” “ My Country, ’t is of thee,” 
and — was there ever anybody that ever broke 
up prose into lengths who would not look to see 
if there were not a copy of some performance 
of his own on the wall he was examining, if he 
were exploring the inner chamber of a freshly 
opened pyramid ? 

We left the great manufacturing establish¬ 
ment of the Messrs. Anthony, more than ever 
impressed with the vast accession of happiness 
conferred upon mankind by this art, which 
has spread itself as widely as civilization. The 
photographer can procure every article need¬ 
ed for his work at moderate cost and in quan- 


234 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


titles suited to his wants. His prices have 
consequently come down to such a point that 
pauperism itself need hardly shrink from the 
outlay required for a family portrait-gallery. 
The “ tin-types,” as the small miniatures are 
called, — stannotypes would be the proper 4 
name, — are furnished at the rate of two cents 
each! A portrait such as Isabey could not 
paint for a Marshal of France, a likeness such 
as Malbone could not make of a President’s 
lady, to be had for two coppers, — a dozen 
chefs d'oeuvre for a quarter of a dollar. 

We had been for a long time meditating a 
devotion of a part of what is left of our more 
or less youthful energies to acquiring practical 
knowledge of the photographic art. The auspi¬ 
cious moment came at last, and we entered 
ourselves as the temporary apprentice of Mr, 
J. W. Black of this city, well known as a 
most skilful photographer and a friendly as¬ 
sistant of beginners in the art. 

We consider ourselves at this present time 
competent to set up a ( photographic ambulance 
or to hang out a sign in any modest country 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


235 


town. We should, no doubt, over-time and 
under-tone, and otherwise wrong the counte¬ 
nances of some of our sitters; but we should 
get the knack in a week or two, and if 
Baron Wenzel owned to having spoiled a hat¬ 
ful of eyes before he had fairly learned how to 
operate for cataract, we need not think too 
much of libelling a few village physiognomies 
before considering ourselves fit to take the min¬ 
ister and his deacons. After years of practice 
there is always something to learn, but every 
one is surprised to find how little time is re¬ 
quired for the acquisition of skill enough to 
make a passable negative and print a tolerable 
picture. We could not help learning, with the 
aid that was afforded us by Mr. Black and his 
assistants, who were all so very courteous and 
pleasant, that, as a token of gratitude, we offered 
to take photographs of any of them who would 
sit to us for that purpose. Every stage of the 
process, from preparing a plate to mounting a 
finished sun-print, we have taught our hands to 
perform, and can therefore speak with a certain 
authority to those who wish to learn the way of 
working with the sunbeam. 


236 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


Notwithstanding the fact that the process of 
making a photographic picture is detailed in a 
great many hooks, — nay, although we have 
given a brief account of the principal stages of it 
in one of our former articles, we are going to 
take the reader into the sanctuary of the art 
with us, and ask him to assist, in the French 
sense of the word, while we make a photograph, 
— say, rather, while the mysterious forces 
which we place in condition to act work that 
miracle for us. 

We are in a room lighted through a roof of 
ground glass, its walls covered with blue paper 
to avoid reflection. A camera mounted on an 
adjustable stand is before us. We will fasten 
this picture, which we are going to copy, against 
the wall. Now we will place the camera oppo¬ 
site to it, and bring it into focus so as to give a 
clear image on the square of ground glass in the 
interior of the instrument. If the image is too 
large, we push the camera back ; if too small, 
push it up towards the picture and focus again. 
The image is wrong side up, as we see ; but if 
we take the trouble to reverse the picture we 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


237 


are copying, it will appear in its proper position 
in the camera. Having got an image of the 
right size, and perfectly sharp, we will prepare 
a sensitive plate, which shall be placed exactly 
where the ground glass now is, so that this same 
image shall be printed on it. 

For this purpose we must quit the warm pre¬ 
cincts of the cheerful day, and go into the nar¬ 
row den where the deeds of darkness are done. 
Its dimensions are of the smallest, and its aspect 
of the rudest. A feeble yellow flame from a 
gas-light is all that illuminates it. All round us 
are troughs and bottles and water-pipes, and ill- 
conditioned utensils of various kinds. Every¬ 
thing is blackened with nitrate of silver ; every 
form of spot, of streak, of splash, of spatter, of 
stain, is to be seen upon the floor, the walls, the 
shelves, the vessels. Leave all linen behind 
you, ye who enter here, or at least protect it at 
every exposed point. Cover your hands in 
gauntlets of India-rubber, if you would not utter 
Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy over them when they 
come to the light of day. Defend the nether 
garments with overalls, such as plain artisans 


238 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


are wont to wear. Button the ancient coat over 
the candid shirt-front, and hold up the retracted 
wristbands by elastic bands around the shirt¬ 
sleeve above the elbow. Conscience and nitrate 
of silver are telltales that never forget any tam¬ 
pering with them, and the broader the light the 
darker their record. Now to our work. 

Here is a square of crown glass three fourths 
as large as a page of the “ Atlantic Monthly,” 
if you happen to know that periodical. Let us 
brush it carefully, that its surface may be free 
from dust. Now we take hold of it by the up¬ 
per left-hand corner and pour some of this thin 
syrup-like fluid upon it, inclining the plate 
gently from side to side, so that it may spread 
evenly over the surface, and let the superfluous 
fluid drain back from the right-hand upper cor¬ 
ner into the bottle. We keep the plate rocking 
from side to side, so as to prevent the fluid run¬ 
ning in lines, as it has a tendency to do. The 
neglect of this precaution is evident in some oth¬ 
erwise excellent photographs ; w^e notice it, for 
instance, in Frith’s Abou Simbel, No. 1, the 
magnificent rock-temple fagade. In less than a 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


239 


minute the syrupy fluid has dried, and appears 
like a film of transparent varnish on the glass 
plate. We now place it on a flat double hook 
of gutta-percha, and lower it gently into the 
nitrate-of-silver bath. As it must remain there 
three or four minutes, we will pass away the 
time in explaining what has been already done. 

The syrupy fluid was iodized collodion. This 
is made by dissolving gun-cotton in ether with 
alcohol, and adding some iodide of ammonium. 
When a thin layer of this fluid is poured on the 
glass plate, the ether and alcohol evaporate very 
speedily, and leave a closely adherent film of 
organic matter derived from the cotton, and 
containing iodide of ammonium. We have 
plunged this into the bath, which contains 
chiefly nitrate of silver, but also some iodide 
of silver, — knowing that a decomposition will 
take place, in consequence of which the iodide 
of ammonium will become changed to the iodide 
of silver, which will now fill the pores of the 
collodion film. The iodide of silver is emi¬ 
nently sensitive to light. The use of the 
collodion is to furnish a delicate, homogeneous, 


240 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


adhesive, colorless layer in which the iodide 
may he deposited. Its organic nature may 
favor the action of light upon the iodide of 
silver. 

While we have been talking and waiting, the 
process just described has been going on, and 
we are now ready to take the glass plate out of 
the nitrate-of-silver bath. It is wholly changed 
in aspect. The film has become in appearance 
like a boiled white of egg, so that the glass pro¬ 
duces rather the effect of porcelain, as we look 
at it. Open no door now ! Let in no glimpse 
of day, or the charm is broken in an instant! 
No Sultana was ever veiled from the light of 
heaven as this milky tablet we hold must be. 
But we must carry it to the camera which 
stands waiting for it in the blaze of high noon. 
To do this, we first carefully place it in this 
narrow case, called a shield, where it lies safe 
in utter darkness. We now cany it to the 
camera, and, having removed the ground glass 
on which the camera-picture had been brought 
to an exact focus, we drop the shield containing 
the sensitive plate into the groove the glass 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


241 


occupied. Then we pull out a slide, as the 
blanket is taken from a horse before he starts. 
There is nothing now but to remove the brass 
cap from the lens. That is giving the word 
Go! It is a tremulous moment for the be¬ 
ginner. 

As we lift the brass cap, we begin to count 
seconds, — by a 'watch, if we are naturally un¬ 
rhythmical, — by the pulsations in our souls, if 
we have an intellectual pendulum and escape¬ 
ment. Most persons can keep tolerably even 
time with a second-hand while it is traversing 
its circle. The light is pretty good at this time, 
and we count only as far as thirty, when we 
cover the lens again with the cap. Then we 
replace the slide in the shield, draw this out of 
the camera, and carry it back into the shadowy 
realm where Cocytus flows in black nitrate of 
silver and Acheron stagnates in the pool of hy¬ 
posulphite, and invisible ghosts, trooping down 
from the world of day, cross a Styx of dissolved 
sulphate of iron, and appear before the Rhada- 
manthus of that lurid Hades. 

Such a ghost we hold imprisoned in the shield 


11 


242 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


we have just brought from the camera. We 
open it, and find our milky-surfaced glass plate 
looking exactly as it did when we placed it in 
the shield. No eye, no microscope, can detect 
a trace of change in the white film that is spread 
over it. And yet there is a potential image in 
it, — a latent soul, which will presently appear 
before its judge. This is the Stygian stream, 
— this solution of protosulphate of iron, with 
which we will presently flood the white surface. 

We pour on the solution. There is no change 
at first; the fluid flows over the whole surface 
as harmless and as useless as if it were water. 
What if there were no picture there ? Stop! 
what is that change of color beginning at this 
edge, and spreading as a blush spreads over a 
girl’s cheek ? It is a border, like that round the 
picture, and then dawns the outline of a head, 
and now the eyes come out from the blank as 
stars from the empty sky, and the lineaments 
define themselves, plainly enough, yet in a 
strange aspect, — for where there was light in 
the picture we have shadow, and where there 
was shadow we have light. But while we look 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


243 


it seems to fade again, as if it would disappear. 
Have no fear of that; it is only deepening its 
shadows. Now we place it under the running 
water which we have always at hand. We 
hold it up before the dull-red gas-light, and then 
we see that every line of the original and the 
artist’s name are reproduced as sharply as if the 
fairies had engraved them for us. The picture 
is perfect of its kind, only it seems to want a 
little more force. That we can easily get by 
the simple process called “intensifying” or 
“ redeveloping.” We mix a solution of nitrate 
of silver and of pyrogallic acid in about equal 
quantities, and pour it upon the pictured film 
and back again into the vessel, repeating this 
with the same portion of fluid several times. 
Presently the fluid grows brownish, and at the 
same time the whole picture gains the depth of 
shadow in its darker parts which we desire. 
Again we place it under the running water. 
When it is well washed, we plunge it into this 
bath of hyposulphite of soda, which removes all 
the iodide of silver, leaving only the dark metal 
impregnating the film. After it has remained 


244 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


there a few minutes, we take it out and wash it 
again as before, under the running stream of 
water. Then we dry it, and when it is dry, 
pour varnish over it, dry that, and it is done. 
This is a negative , — not a true picture, but a 
reversed picture, which puts darkness for light 
and light for darkness. From this we can take 
true pictures, or positives. 

Let us now proceed to take one of these pic¬ 
tures. In a small room, lighted by a few rays 
which filter through a yellow curtain, a youth 
has been employed all the morning in develop¬ 
ing the sensitive conscience of certain sheets of 
paper, which came to him from the manufac¬ 
turer already glazed by having been floated 
upon the white of eggs and carefully dried, 
as previously described. This “ albumenized ” 
paper the youth lays gently and skilfully upon 
the surface of a solution of nitrate of silver. 
When it has floated there a few minutes, he 
lifts it, lets it drain, and hangs it by one corner 
to dry. This “ sensitized ” paper is served 
fresh every morning, as it loses its delicacy by 
keeping. 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


245 


We take a piece of this paper of the proper 
size, and lay it on the varnished or pictured side 
of the negative, which is itself laid in a wooden 
frame, like a picture-frame. Then we place a 
thick piece of cloth on the paper. Then we 
lay a hinged wooden back on the cloth, and by 
means of two brass springs press all close to¬ 
gether, — the wooden back against the cloth, 
the cloth against the paper, the paper against 
the negative. We turn the frame over, and see 
that the plain side of the glass negative is clean. 
And now we step out upon the roof of the 
house into the bright sunshine, and lay the 
frame, with the glass uppermost, in the full 
blaze of light. For a very little while we can 
see the paper darkening through the negative, 
but presently it clouds so much that its further 
changes cannot be recognized. When we think 
it has darkened nearly enough, we turn it over, 
open a part of the hinged back, turn down first 
a portion of the thick cloth, and then enough of 
the paper to see something of the forming pic¬ 
ture. If not printed dark enough as yet, we 
turn back to their places successively the pic- 


246 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


ture, the cloth, the opened part of the frame, 
and lay it again in the sun. It is just like 
cooking: the sun is the fire, and the picture is 
the cake ; when it is browned exactly to the right 
point, we take it off the fire. A photograph- 
printer will have fifty or more pictures printing 
at once, and he keeps going up and down the 
line, opening the frames to look and see how 
they are getting on. As fast as they are done, 
he turns them over, back to the sun, and the 
cooking process stops at once. 

The pictures which have just been printed in 
the sunshine are of a peculiar purple tint, and 
still sensitive to the light, which will first “ flat¬ 
ten them out, ” and finally darken the whole pa¬ 
per, if they are exposed to it before the series 
of processes which “ fixes” and “ tones 99 them. 
They are kept shaded, therefore, until a batch 
is ready to go down to the toning-room. 

When they reach that part of the establish¬ 
ment, the first thing that is done with them is 
to throw them face down upon the surface of 
a salt bath. Their purple changes at once to a 
dull red. They are then washed in clean water 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


247 


for a few minutes, and after that laid, face up, 
in a solution of chloride of gold with a salt of 
soda. Here they must lie for some minutes at 
least; for the change, which we can watch by 
the scanty daylight admitted, goes on slowly. 
Gradually they turn to a darker shade; the 
reddish tint becomes lilac, purple, brown, of 
somewhat different tints in different cases. 
When the process seems to have gone far 
enough, the picture is thrown into a bath con¬ 
taining hyposulphite of soda, which dissolves the 
superfluous, unstable compounds, and rapidly 
clears up the lighter portion of the picture. 
On being removed from this, it is thoroughly 
washed, dried, and mounted, by pasting it with 
starch or dextrine to a card of the proper size. 

The reader who has followed the details of 
the process may like to know what are the com¬ 
mon difficulties the beginner meets with. 

The first is in coating the glass with collo¬ 
dion. It takes some practice to l,earn to do this 
neatly and uniformly. 

The second is in timing the immersion in the 
nitrate-of-silver bath. This is easily overcome ; 


248 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


the glass may be examined by the feeble lamp¬ 
light at the end of two or three minutes, and, if 
the surface looks streaky, replunged in the bath 
for a minute or two more, or until the surface 
looks smooth. 

The third is in getting an exact focus in the 
camera, which wants good eyes, or strong glasses 
for poor ones. 

The fourth is in timing the exposure. This 
is the most delicate of all the processes. Expe¬ 
rience alone can teach the time required with 
different objects in different lights. Here are 
four card-portraits from a negative taken from 
one of Barry’s crayon-pictures, illustrating an 
experiment which will prove very useful to the 
beginner. The negative of No. 1 was exposed 
only two seconds. The young lady’s face is 
very dusky on a very dusky ground. The lights 
have hardly come out at all. No. 2 was exposed 
five seconds. Undertimed, but much cleared 
up. No. 8 was exposed fifteen seconds, about 
the proper time. It is the best of the series, 
but the negative ought to have been intensified. 
It looks as if Miss E. Y. had washed her face 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


249 


since the five-seconds picture was taken. No. 
4 was exposed sixty seconds, that is to say, 
three or four times too long. It has a curious 
resemblance to No. 1, but is less dusky. The 
contrasts of light and shade which gave life to 
No. 3 have disappeared, and the face looks as if 
a second application of soap would improve it. 
A few trials of this kind will teach the eye to 
recognize the appearances of under and over¬ 
exposure, so that, if the first negative proves to 
have been too long or too short a time in the 
camera, the proper period of exposure for the 
next may be pretty easily determined. 

The printing from the negative is less diffi¬ 
cult, because we can examine the picture as 
often as we choose; hut it may be well to un¬ 
dertime and overtime some pictures, for the 
sake of a lesson like that taught by the series 
of pictures from the four negatives. 

The only other point likely to prove difficult 
is the toning in the gold bath. As the picture 
can be watched, however, a very little practice 
will enable us to recognize the shade which in¬ 
dicates that this part of the process is finished, 
n* 


250 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


We have copied a picture, "but we can take a 
portrait from Nature just as easily, except for a 
little more trouble in adjusting the position and 
managing the light. So easy is it to reproduce 
the faces that we love to look upon; so simple 
is that marvellous work by which we preserve 
the first smile of infancy and the last look of 
age; the most precious gift Art ever bestowed 
upon love and friendship! 

It will be observed that the glass plate, cov¬ 
ered with its film of collodion, was removed 
directly from the nitrate-of-silver bath to the 
camera, so as to be exposed to its image while 
still wet. It is obvious that this process is one 
that can hardly be performed conveniently at a 
distance from the artist’s place of work. Solu¬ 
tions of nitrate of silver are not carried about 
and decanted into baths and back again into 
bottles without tracking their path on persons 
and things. The photophobia of the “ sensi¬ 
tized” plate, of course, requires a dark apart¬ 
ment of some kind : commonly a folding tent 
is made to answer the purpose in photographic 
excursions. It becomes, therefore, a serious 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


251 


matter to transport all that is required to make 
a negative according to the method described. 
It has consequently been a great desideratum 
to find some way of preparing a sensitive plate 
which could be dried and laid away, retaining 
its sensitive quality for days or weeks, until 
wanted. The artist would then have to take 
with him nothing but his camera and his dry 
sensitive plates. After exposing these in the 
camera, they would be kept in dark boxes until 
he was ready to develop them at leisure on re¬ 
turning to his atelier. 

Many “ dry methods ” have been contrived, 
of which the tannin process is in most favor. 
The plate, after being “ sensitized ” and washed, 
is plunged in a bath containing ten grains of tan¬ 
nin to an ounce of water. It is then dried, and 
may be kept for a long time without losing its 
sensitive quality. It is placed dry in the cam¬ 
era, and developed by wetting it and then pour¬ 
ing over it a mixture of pyrogallic acid and the 
solution of nitrate of silver. Amateurs find 
this the best way of taking scenery, and pro¬ 
duce admirable pictures by it, as we shall men¬ 
tion by and by. 


252 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


In our former articles we have spoken prin¬ 
cipally of stereoscopic pictures. These are still 
our chief favorites for scenery, for architectural 
objects, for almost everything but portraits,— 
and even these last acquire a reality in the 
stereoscope which they can get in no other way. 
In this third photographic excursion we must 
only touch briefly upon the stereograph. Yet 
we have something to add to what we said 
before on this topic. 

One of the most interesting accessions to our 
collection is a series of twelve views, on glass, 
of scenes and objects in California, sent us with 
unprovoked liberality by the artist, Mr. Wat¬ 
kins. As specimens of art they are admirable, 
and some of the subjects are among the most 
interesting to be found in the whole realm of 
Nature. Thus, the great tree, the “ Grizzly 
Giant,” of Mariposa, is shown in two admira¬ 
ble views ; the mighty precipice of El Capitan, 
more than three thousand feet in precipitous 
height,— the three conical hill-tops of Yo Sem¬ 
ite, taken, not as they soar into the atmosphere, 
but as they are reflected in the calm waters be- 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


253 


low, — these and others are shown, clear, yet 
soft, vigorous in the foreground, delicately dis¬ 
tinct in the distance, in a perfection of art 
which compares with the finest European work. 

The “ London Stereoscopic Company ” has 
produced some very beautiful paper stereo¬ 
graphs, very dear, but worth their cost, of the 
Great Exhibition. There is one view, which 
we are fortunate enough to possess, that is a 
marvel of living detail, — one of the series 
showing the opening ceremonies. The picture 
gives principally the musicians. By careful 
counting, we find there are six hundred faces 
to the square inch in the more crowded portion 
of the scene which the view embraces, — a part 
occupied by the female singers. These singers 
are all clad in white, and packed with great 
compression of crinoline, — if that, indeed, were 
worn on the occasion. Mere points as their 
faces seem to the naked eye, the stereoscope, 
and still more a strong magnifier, shows them 
with their mouths all open as they join in the 
chorus, and with such distinctness that some of 
them might readily be recognized by those fa- 


254 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


miliar with their aspect. This, it is to be re¬ 
membered, is not a reduced stereograph for the 
microscope, hut a common one, taken as we see 
them taken constantly. 

We find in the same series several very good 
views of Gibson’s famous colored “Venus,” a 
lady with a pleasant face and a very pretty pair 
of shoulders. But the grand “ Cleopatra ” of 
our countryman, Mr. Story, of which we have 
heard so much, was not to be had, — why not 
we cannot say, for a stereograph of it would 
have had an immense success in America, and 
doubtless everywhere. 

The London Stereoscopic Company has also 
furnished us with views of Paris, many of them 
instantaneous, far in advance of the earlier ones 
of Parisian origin. Our darling little church of 
St. Etienne du Mont, for instance, with its stair¬ 
case and screen of stone embroidery, its carved 
oaken pulpit borne on the back of a carved 
oaken Samson, its old monuments, its stained 
windows, is brought back to us in all its minute 
detail as we remember it in many a visit made 
on our way back from the morning’s work at 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


255 


La Piti6 to the late breakfast at the Caf£ Pro¬ 
cope. Some of the instantaneous views are of 
great perfection, and carry us as fairly upon the 
Boulevards as Mr. Anthony transports us to 
Broadway. With the exception of this series, 
we have found very few new stereoscopic pic¬ 
tures in the market for the last year or two. 
This is not so much owing to the increased ex¬ 
pense of importing foreign views as to the greater 
popularity of card-portraits , which, as everybody 
knows, have become the social currency, the 
sentimental “ Green-backs ” of civilization, with¬ 
in a very recent period. 

We, who have exhausted our terms of admi¬ 
ration in describing the stereoscopic picture, 
will not quarrel with the common taste which 
prefers the card-portrait. The last is the cheap¬ 
est, the most portable, requires no machine to 
look at it with, can be seen by several persons 
at the same time, — in short, has all the popular 
elements. Many care little for the wonders of 
the world brought before their eyes by the 
stereoscope; all love to see the faces of their 
friends. Jonathan does not think a great deal 


256 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


of the Verms of -Milo, but falls into raptures 
over a card-portrait of his Jerusha. So far 
from finding fault with him, we rejoice rather 
that his affections and those of average mor¬ 
tality are better developed than their taste ; and 
lost as we sometimes are in contemplation of 
the shadowy masks of ugliness which hang in 
the frames of the photographers, as the skins 
of beasts are stretched upon tanners’ fences, we 
still feel grateful, when we remember the days 
of itinerant portrait-painters, that the indignities 
of Nature are no longer intensified by the out¬ 
rages of Art. 

The sitters who throng the photographer’s 
establishment are a curious study. They are 
of all ages, from the babe in arms to the old 
wrinkled patriarchs and dames whose smiles 
have as many furrows as an ancient elm has 
rings that count its summers. The sun is a 
Rembrandt in his way, and loves to track all the 
lines in these old splintered faces. A photo¬ 
graph of one of them is like one of those 
fossilized sea-beaches where the rain-drops have 
left their marks, and the shell-fish the grooves 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


257 


in which they crawled, and the wading birds 
the divergent lines of their footprints,—tears, 
cares, griefs, once vanishing as impressions from 
the sand, now fixed as the vestiges in the sand¬ 
stone. 

Attitudes, dresses, features, hands, feet, betray 
the social grade of the candidates for portraiture. 
The picture tells no lie about them. There is 
no use in their putting on airs ; the make- 
believe gentleman and lady cannot look like the 
genuine article. Mediocrity shows itself for 
what it is worth, no matter what temporary 
name it may have acquired. Ill-temper can¬ 
not hide itself under the simper of assumed 
amiability. The querulousness of incompetent 
complaining natures confesses itself almost as 
much as in the tones of the voice. The anxiety 
which strives to smooth its forehead cannot get 
rid of the telltale furrow. The weakness which 
belongs to the infirm of purpose and vacuous of 
thought is hardly to be disguised, even though 
the moustache is allowed to hide the centre of 
expression. 

All parts of a face doubtless have their fixed 

Q 


258 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


relations to each other and to the character of 
the person to whom the face belongs. But 
there is one feature, and especially one part of 
that feature, which more than any other facial 
sign reveals the nature of the individual. The 
feature is the mouth, and the portion of it referred 
to is the corner. A circle of half an inch radius, 
having its centre at the junction of the two lips, 
will include the chief focus of expression. 

This will be easily understood, if we reflect 
that here is the point where more muscles of 
expression converge than at any other. From 
above comes the elevator of the angle of the 
mouth ; from the region of the cheek-bone slant 
downwards the two zygomatics, which carry the 
angle outwards and upwards ; from behind comes 
the buccinator , or trumpeter’s muscle, which sim¬ 
ply widens the mouth by drawing the corners 
straight outward ; from below, the depressor of 
the angle ; not to add a seventh, sometimes well 
marked, — the “ laughing muscle” of Santorini. 
Within the narrow circle where these muscles 
meet the ring of muscular fibres surrounding 
the mouth the battles of the soul record their 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


259 


-varying fortunes and results. This is the u noeud 
vital” — to borrow Flourens’s expression with 
reference to a nervous centre, — the vital knot 
of expression. Here we may read the victories 
and defeats, the force, the weakness, the hard¬ 
ness, the sweetness of a character. Here is the 
nest of that feeble fowl, self-consciousness, whose 
brood strays at large over all the features. 

If you wish to see the very look your friend 
wore when his portrait was taken, let not the 
finishing artist’s pencil intrude within the circle 
of the vital knot of expression. 

We have learned many curious facts from 
photographic portraits which we were slow to 
learn from faces. One is the great number 
of aspects belonging to each countenance with 
which we are familiar. Sometimes, in looking 
at a portrait, it seems to us that this is just the 
face we know, and that it is always thus. But 
again another view shows us a wholly different 
aspect, which is yet as absolutely characteristic 
as the first; and a third and a fourth convince 
us that our friend was not one, but many, in 
outward appearance, as in the mental and 


260 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


emotional shapes by which his inner nature 
made itself known to us. 

Another point which must have struck every¬ 
body who has studied photographic portraits is 
the family likeness that shows itself throughout 
a whole wide connection. We notice it more 
readily than in life, from the fact that we bring 
many of these family portraits together, and 
study them more at our ease. There is some¬ 
thing in the face that corresponds to tone in the 
voice, — recognizable, not capable of descrip¬ 
tion ; and this kind of resemblance in the faces 
of kindred we may observe, though the features 
are unlike. But the features themselves are 
wonderfully tenacious of their old patterns. 
The Prince of Wales is getting to look like 
George III. We noticed it when he was in 
this country ; we see it more plainly in his re¬ 
cent photographs. Governor Endicott’s features 
have come straight down to some of his descend¬ 
ants in the present day. There is a dimpled 
chin which runs through one family connection 
we have studied, and a certain form of lip which 
belongs to another. As our cheval de battaille 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


261 


stands ready saddled and bridled for us just now, 
we must indulge ourselves in mounting him for 
a brief excursion. This is a story we have told 
so often that we should begin to doubt it but 
for the fact that we have before us the written 
statement of the person who was its subject. 
His professor, who did not know his name or 
anything about him, stopped him one day after 
lecture and asked him if he was not a relation 

of Mr.-, a person of some note in Essex 

County. — Not that he had ever heard of. — 
The professor thought he must be, — would he 
inquire ? — Two or three days afterwards, hav¬ 
ing made inquiries at his home in Middlesex 
County, he reported that an elder member of 
the family informed him that Mr.-’s great¬ 

grandfather on his mother’s side and his own 
great-grandfather on his father’s side were own 
cousins. The whole class of facts, of which this 
seems to us too singular an instance to be lost, 
is forcing itself into notice, with new strength 
of evidence, through the galleries of photo¬ 
graphic family portraits which are making every¬ 
where. 




262 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM 


Iu the course of a certain number of years 
there will have been developed some new physi¬ 
ognomical results, which will prove of extreme 
interest to the physiologist and the moralist. 
They will take time ; for, to bring some of them 
out fully, a generation must be followed from its 
cradle to its grave. 

The first will be derived from a precise 
study of the effects of age upon the features. 
Many series of portraits taken at short intervals 
through life, studied carefully side by side, will 
probably show to some acute observer that Na¬ 
ture is very exact in the tallies that mark the 
years of human life. 

The second is to result from a course of in¬ 
vestigations which we would rather indicate 
than follow out; for, if the student of.it did 
not fear the fate of Phalaris, — that he should 
find himself condemned as unlife worthy upon 
the basis of his own observations, — he would 
very certainly become the object of eternal 
hatred to the proprietors of all the semi-organi¬ 
zations which he felt obliged to condemn. It 
consists in the study of the laws of physical 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


263 


degeneration, — the stages and manifestations of 
the process by which Nature dismantles the 
complete and typical human organism, until it 
becomes too bad for her own sufferance, and she 
kills it off before the advent of the reproductive 
period, that it may not permanently depress her 
average of vital force by taking part in the life 
of the race. There are many signs that fall far 
short of the marks of cretinism, — yet just as 
plain as that is to the visus eruditus, — which 
one meets every hour of the day in every circle 
of society. Many of these are partial arrests 
of development. We do not care to mention 
all which we think may be recognized, but there 
is one which we need not hesitate to speak of 
from the fact that it is so exceedingly common. 

The vertical part of the lower jaw is short, 
and the angle of the jaw is obtuse, in infancy. 
When the organizing force is abundant, the 
lower jaw, which, as the active partner in the 
business of mastication, must be developed in 
proportion to the vigor of the nutritive appa¬ 
ratus, comes down by a rapid growth which 
gives the straight-cut posterior line and the bold 


2G4 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


right angle so familiar to us in the portraits of 
pugilists, exaggerated by the caricaturists in 
their faces of fighting men, and noticeable in 
well-developed persons of all classes. But in 
imperfectly grown adults the jaw retains the 
infantile character, — the short vertical portion 
necessarily implying the obtuse angle. The 
upper jaw at the same time fails to expand lat¬ 
erally : in vigorous organisms it spreads out 
boldly, and the teeth stand square and with 
space enough; whereas in subvitalized persons 
it remains narrow, as in the child, so that the 
large front teeth are crowded, and slanted for¬ 
ward, or thrown out of line. This want of lat¬ 
eral expansion is frequently seen in the jaws, 
upper and lower, of the American, and has 
been considered a common cause of caries of 
the teeth. 

A third series of results will relate to the 
effect of character in moulding the features. Go 
through a “ rogues’ gallery ” and observe what 
the faces of the most hardened villains have in 
common. All these villanous looks have been 
shaped out of the unmeaning lineaments of in- 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


265 


fancy. The police-officers know well enough 
the expression of habitual crime. Now, if all 
this series of faces had been carefully studied in 
photographs from the days of innocence to those 
of confirmed guilt, there is no doubt that a keen 
eye might recognize, we will not say the first 
evil volition in the change it wrought upon the 
face, nor each successive stage in the downward 
process of the falling nature, but epochs and 
eras, with differential marks, as palpable per¬ 
haps as those which separate the aspects of the 
successive decades of life. And what is far 
pleasanter, when the character of a neglected 
and vitiated child is raised by wise culture, the 
converse change will be found — nay, has been 
found — to record itself unmistakably upon the 
faithful page of the countenance ; so that charita¬ 
ble institutions have learned that their strongest 
appeal lies in the request, “ Look on this pic¬ 
ture, and on that,”—the lawless boy at his 
entrance, and the decent youth at his dismissal. 

The field of photography is extending itself to 
embrace subjects of strange and sometimes of 
fearful interest. We have referred in a former 


12 


266 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


article to a stereograph in a friend’s collection 
showing the bodies of the slain heaped up for 
burial after the Battle of Melegnano. We have 
now before us a series of photographs showing 
the field of Antietam and the surrounding 
country, as they appeared after the great battle 
of the 17th of September. These terrible me¬ 
mentos of one of the most sanguinary conflicts 
of the war we ow T e to the enterprise of Mr. 
Brady of New York. We ourselves were on the 
field upon the Sunday following the Wednesday 
when the battle took place. It is not, however, 
for us to bear witness to the fidelity of views 
which the truthful sunbeam has delineated in 
all their dread reality. The photographs bear 
witness to the accuracy of some of our own 
sketches in a paper published in the “ Atlantic 
Monthly ” for December, 1862. The “ ditch ” 
is figured, still encumbered with the dead, and 
strewed, as we saw it and the neighboring fields, 
with fragments and tatters. The “ colonel’s 
gray horse ” is given in another picture, just as 
we saw him lying. 

Let him who wishes to know what war is 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


267 


look at this series of illustrations. These wrecks 
of .manhood, thrown together in careless heaps 
or ranged in ghastly rows for burial, were alive 
but yesterday. How dear to their little circles 
far away, most of them! — how little cared for 
here by the tired party whose office it is to con¬ 
sign them to the earth ! An officer may here 
and there be recognized ; but for the rest, — if 
enemies, they will be counted, and that is all. 
“ 80 Rebels are buried in this hole ” was one 
of the epitaphs we read and recorded. Many 
people would not look through this series. 
Many, having seen it and dreamed of its hor¬ 
rors, would lock it up in some secret drawer, 
that it might not thrill or revolt those whose 
soul sickens at such sights. It was so nearly 
like visiting the battle-field to look over these 
views, that all the emotions excited by the actual 
sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed 
with rags and wrecks, came back to us, and we 
buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we 
would have buried the mutilated remains of the 
dead they too vividly represented. Yet war 
and battles should have truth for their delinea- 


268 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


tor. It is well enough for some Baron Gros or 
Horace Yernet to please an imperial master 
with fanciful portraits of what they are supposed 
to be. The honest sunshine 

“ Is Nature’s sternest painter, yet the best ”; 

and that gives us, even without the crimson 
coloring which flows over the recent picture, 
some conception of what a repulsive, brutal, 
sickening, hideous thing it is, this dashing to¬ 
gether of two frantic mobs to which we give 
the name of armies. The end to be attained 
justifies the means, we are willing to believe ; 
but the sight of these pictures is a commentary 
on civilization such as a savage might well tri¬ 
umph to show its missionaries. Yet through 
such martyrdom must come our redemption. 
War is the surgery of crime. Bad as it is in 
itself, it always implies that something worse has 
gone before. Where is the American, worthy of 
his privileges, who does not now recognize the 
fact, if never until now, that the disease of our 
nation was organic, not functional, calling for the 
knife, and not for washes and anodynes ? 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


269 


It is a relief to soar away from the contempla 
tion of these sad scenes, and fly in the balloon 
which carried Messrs. King and Black in their 
aerial photographic excursion. Our townsman, 
Dr. John Jeffries, as is well recollected, was one 
of the first to tempt the perilous heights of the 
atmosphere, and the first who ever performed a 
journey through the air of any considerable ex¬ 
tent. We believe this attempt of our younger 
townsmen to be the earliest in which the aero¬ 
naut has sought to work the two miracles at 
once, of rising against the force of gravity, and 
picturing the face of the earth beneath him 
without brush or pencil. 

One of their photographs is lying before us. 
Boston, as the eagle and the wild goose see it, 
is a very different object from the same place as 
the solid citizen looks up at its eaves and chim¬ 
neys. The Old South and Trinity Church are 
two landmarks not to be mistaken. Washing¬ 
ton Street slants across the picture as a narrow 
cleft. Milk Street winds as if the cowpath 
which gave it a name had been followed by the 
builders of its commercial palaces. Windows, 


270 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


chimneys, and skylights attract the eye in the 
central parts of the view, exquisitely defined, 
bewildering in numbers. Towards the circum¬ 
ference it grows darker, becoming clouded and 
confused, and at one end a black expanse of 
waveless water is whitened by the nebulous 
outline of flitting sails. As a first attempt, it 
is on the whole a remarkable success ; but its 
greatest interest is in showing what we may 
hope to see accomplished in the same direction. 

While the aeronaut is looking at our planet 
from the vault of heaven where he hangs sus¬ 
pended, and seizing the image of the scene be¬ 
neath him as he flies, the astronomer is causing 
the heavenly bodies to print their images on the 
sensitive sheet he spreads under the rays con¬ 
centrated by his telescope. We have formerly 
taken occasion to speak of the wonderful stereo¬ 
scopic figures of the moon taken by Mr. De la 
Rue in England, by Mr. Rutherford and by Mr. 
Whipple in this country. To these most suc¬ 
cessful experiments must be added that of Dr. 
Henry Draper, who has constructed a reflecting 
telescope, with the largest silver reflector in the 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


271 


world, except that of the Imperial Observatory 
at Paris, for the special purpose of celestial pho¬ 
tography. The reflectors made by Dr. Draper 
“ will show Debilissima quadruple, and easily 
bring out the companion of Sirius or the sixth 
star in the trapezium of Orion. ” In taking 
photographs from these mirrors, a movement of 
the sensitive plate of only one hundredth of an 
inch will render the image perceptibly less 
sharp. It was this accuracy of convergence of 
the light which led Dr. Draper to prefer the 
mirror to the achromatic lens. He has taken 
almost all the daily phases of the moon, from 
the sixth to the twenty-seventh day, using most¬ 
ly some of Mr. Anthony’s quick collodion, and 
has repeatedly obtained the full moon by means 
of it in one third of a second. 

In the last “ Annual of Scientific Discovery ” 
are interesting notices of photographs of the 
sun, showing the spots on his disk, of Jupiter 
with his belts, and Saturn with his ring. 

While the astronomer has been reducing the 
heavenly bodies to the dimensions of his stereo¬ 
scopic slide, the anatomist has been lifting the 


272 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


invisible by the aid of his microscope into pal¬ 
pable dimensions, to remain permanently re¬ 
corded in the handwriting of the sun himself. 
Eighteen years ago, M. Donnd published in 
Paris a series of plates executed after figures 
obtained by the process of Daguerre. These, 
which we have long employed in teaching, give 
some pretty good views of various organic 
elements, but do not attempt to reproduce any 
of the tissues. Professor O. N. Rood, of Troy, 
has sent us some most interesting photographs, 
showing the markings of infusoria enormously 
magnified and perfectly defined. In a stereo¬ 
graph sent us by the same gentleman the 
epithelium scales from mucous membrane are 
shown floating or half submerged in fluid, — a 
very curious effect, requiring the double image 
to produce it. Of all the microphotographs we 
have seen, those made by Dr. John Dean, of 
Boston, from his own sections of the spinal 
cord, are the most remarkable for the light they 
throw on the minute structure of the body. 
The sections made by Dr. Dean are in them¬ 
selves very beautiful specimens, and have formed 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


273 


the basis of a communication to the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, in which many 
new observations have been added to our knowl¬ 
edge of this most complicated structure. But 
figures drawn from images seen in the field of 
the microscope have too often been known to 
borrow a good deal from the imagination of the 
beholder. Some objects are so complex that 
they defy the most cunning hand to render 
them with all their features. When the enlarged 
image is suffered to delineate itself, as in Dr. 
Dean’s views of the medulla oblongata , there is 
no room to question the exactness of the por¬ 
traiture, and the distant student is able to form 
his own opinion as well as the original observer. 
These later achievements of Dr. Dean have ex¬ 
cited much attention here and in Europe, and 
point to a new epoch of anatomical and physio¬ 
logical delineation. 

The reversed method of microscopic photog¬ 
raphy is that which gives portraits and docu¬ 
ments in little. The best specimen of this kind 
we have obtained is another of those miracles 
which recall the wonders of Arabian fiction. 


12* 


R 


274 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


On a slip of glass, three inches long by one 
broad, is a circle of thinner glass, as large as a 
ten-cent piece. In the centre of this is a speck, 
as if a fly had stepped there without scraping 
his foot before setting it down. On putting this 
under a microscope magnifying fifty diameters 
there come into view the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence in full, in a clear, bold type, every 
name signed in fac-simile ; the arms of all the 
States, easily made out, and well finished ; with 
good portraits of all the Presidents down to a 
recent date. Any person familiar with their 
faces would recognize any one of these portraits 
in a moment. 

Still another application of photography, be¬ 
coming every day more and more familiar to 
the public, is that which produces enlarged por¬ 
traits, even life-size ones, from the old daguerro- 
type or more recent photographic miniature. 
As we have seen this process, a closet is ar¬ 
ranged as a camera-obscura, and the enlarged 
image is thrown down through a lens above on 
a sheet of sensitive paper placed on a table capa¬ 
ble of being easily elevated or depressed. The 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


275 


image, weakened by diffusion over so large a 
space, prints itself slowly, but at last comes out 
with a clearness which is surprising, — a fact 
which is parallel to what is observed in the 
stereoscopticon , where a picture of a few square 
inches in size is “ extended ” or diluted so as to 
cover some hundreds of square feet, and yet 
preserves its sharpness to a degree which seems 
incredible. 

The copying of documents to be used as evi¬ 
dence is another most important application of 
photography. No scribe, however skilful, could 
reproduce such a paper as we saw submitted to 
our fellow-workman in Mr. Black’s establish¬ 
ment the other day. It contained perhaps a 
hundred names and marks, but smeared, spot¬ 
ted, soiled, rubbed, and showing every awkward 
shape of penmanship that a miscellaneous col¬ 
lection of half-educated persons could furnish. 
No one, on looking at the photographic copy, 
could doubt that it was a genuine reproduction 
of a real list of signatures ; and when half a 
dozen such copies, all just alike, were shown, 
the conviction became a certainty that all had a 


276 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


common origin. This copy was made with a 
Harrison's globe lens of sixteen inches’ focal 
length, and was a very sharp and accurate du¬ 
plicate of the original. It is claimed for this 
new American invention that it is “ quite ahead 
of anything European”; and the certificates 
from the United States Coast-Survey Office go 
far towards sustaining its pretensions. 

Some of our readers are aware that photo¬ 
graphic operations are not confined to the delin¬ 
eation of material objects. There are certain 
establishments in which, for an extra considera¬ 
tion (on account of the difficilis ascensus , or 
other long journey they have to take), the 
spirits of the departed appear in the same pic¬ 
ture which gives the surviving friends. The ac¬ 
tinic influence of a ghost on a sensitive plate is 
not so strong as might be desired ; but consider¬ 
ing that spirits are so nearly immaterial, that the 
stars, as Ossian tells us, can be seen through 
their vaporous outlines, the effect is perhaps as 
good as ought to be expected. 

Mrs. Brown, for instance, has lost her infant, 
and wishes to have its spirit-portrait taken with 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


277 


her own. A special sitting is granted, and a 
special fee is paid. In due time the photograph 
is ready, and sure enough, there is the misty 
image of an infant in the background, or, it may 
be, across the mother’s lap. Whether the orig¬ 
inal of the image was a month or a year old, 
whether it belonged to Mrs. Brown or Mrs. 
Jones or Mrs. Robinson, King Solomon, wdio 
could point out so sagaciously the parentage of 
unauthenticated babies, would be puzzled to 
guess. But it is enough for the poor mother, 
whose eyes are blinded with tears, that she sees 
a print of drapery like an infant’s dress, and a 
rounded something, like a foggy dumpling, 
which will stand for a face; she accepts the 
spirit-portrait as a revelation from the world 
of shadows. Those who have seen shapes in 
the clouds, or remember Hamlet and Polonius, 
or who have noticed how readily untaught eyes 
see a portrait of parent, spouse, or child in 
almost any daub intended for the same, will un¬ 
derstand how easily the weak people who resort 
to these places are deluded. 

There are various ways of producing the 


278 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


spirit-photographs. One of the easiest is this. 
First procure a bereaved subject with a mind 
“ sensitized ” by long immersion in credulity. 
Find out the age, sex, and whatever else you 
can, about his or her departed relative. Select 
from your numerous negatives one that corre¬ 
sponds to the late lamented as nearly as may be. 
Prepare a sensitive plate. Now place the nega¬ 
tive against it and hold it up close to your gas- 
lamp, which may be turned up pretty high. In 
this way you get a foggy copy of the negative 
in one part of the sensitive plate, which you can 
then place in the camera and take your flesh- 
and-blood sitter’s portrait upon it in the usual 
way. An appropriate background for these 
pictures is a view of the asylum for feeble¬ 
minded persons, the group of buildings at 
Somerville, and possibly, if the penitentiary 
could be introduced, the hint would be salu¬ 
tary. 

The number of amateur artists in photogra¬ 
phy is continually increasing. The interest we 
ourselves have taken in some results of photo¬ 
graphic art has brought us under a weight of 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


279 


obligation to many of them which we can hardly 
expect to discharge. Some of the v friend&.... in 
our immediate neighborhood have sent us pho¬ 
tographs of their own making, which, for clear¬ 
ness and purity of tone, compare favorably with 
the best professional work. Among our more 
distant correspondents there are two so widely 
known to photographers that we need not hesi¬ 
tate to name them: Mr. Coleman Sellers of 
Philadelphia and Mr. S. Wager Hull of New 
York. Many beautiful specimens of photo¬ 
graphic art have been sent us by these gentle¬ 
men, — among others, some exquisite views of 
Sunnyside and of the scene of Ichabod Crane’s 
adventures. Mr. Hull has also furnished us 
with a full account of the dry process, as fol¬ 
lowed by him, and from which he brings out 
results hardly surpassed by any method. 

A photographic intimacy between two per¬ 
sons who never saw each other’s faces (that is, 
in Nature’s original positive, the principal use 
of which, after all, is to furnish negatives from 
which portraits may be taken) is a new form 
of friendship. After an introduction by means 



280 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


of a few views of scenery or other impersonal 
objects, with a letter or two of explanation, the 
artist sends his own presentment, not in the stiff 
shape of a purchased carte de visite , but as seen 
in his own study or parlor, surrounded by the 
domestic accidents which so add to the individ¬ 
uality of the student or the artist. You see 
him at his desk or table with his books and 
stereoscopes round him ; you notice the lamp by 
which he reads, — the objects lying about; you 
guess his condition, whether married or single; 
you divine his tastes, apart from that which he 
has in common with yourself. By and by, as 
he warms towards you, he sends you the pic¬ 
ture of what lies next to his heart, — a lovely 
boy, for instance, such as laughs upon us in the 
delicious portrait on which we are now looking, 
or an old homestead, fragrant with all the roses 
of his dead summers, caught in one of Nature’s 
loving moments, with the sunshine gilding it 
like the light of his own memory. And so these 
shadows have made him, with his outer and 
his inner life, a reality for you; and but for his 
voice, which you have never heard, you know 


DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM. 


281 


him better than hundreds who call him by 
name, as they meet him year after year, and 
reckon him among their familiar acquaintances. 

To all these friends of ours, those whom we 
have named, and not less those whom we have 
silently remembered, we send our grateful ac¬ 
knowledgments. They have never allowed the 
interest we have long taken in the miraculous 
art of photography to slacken. Though not 
one of them may learn anything from this sim¬ 
ple account we have given, they will perhaps 
allow that it has a certain value for less instruct¬ 
ed readers, in consequence of its numerous and 
rich omissions of much which, however valua¬ 
ble, is not at first indispensable. 



THE HUMAN WHEEL, ITS SPOKES 
AND FELLOES. 



T HE starting-point of this paper was a de¬ 
sire to call attention to certain remarkable 
American Inventions, especially to one class 
of mechanical contrivances, which, at the pres¬ 
ent time, assumes a vast importance and inter- 








THE HUMAN WHEEL. 


283 


ests great multitudes. The limbs of our friends 
and countrymen are a part of the melancholy 
harvest which War is sweeping down with 
Dahlgren’s mowing-machine and the patent 
reapers of Springfield and Hartford. The ad¬ 
mirable contrivances of an American inventor, 
prized as they were in ordinary times, have 
risen into the character of great national bless¬ 
ings since the necessity for them has become 
so widely felt. While the weapons that have 
gone from Mr. Colt’s armories have been carry¬ 
ing death to friend and foe, the beneficent and 
ingenious inventions of Mr. Palmer have been 
repairing the losses inflicted by the implements 
of war. 

The study of the artificial limbs which owe 
their perfection to his skill and long-continued 
labor has led us a little beyond its first object, 
and finds its natural prelude in some remarks on 
the natural limbs and their movements. Ac¬ 
cident directed our attention, while engaged 
with this subject, to the efforts of another 
ingenious American to render the use of our 
lower extremities easier by shaping their arti- 


284 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


ficial coverings more in accordance with their 
true form than is done by the empirical cord- 
wainer, and thus Dr. Plumer must submit to 
the coupling of some mention of his praiseworthy 
efforts in the same pages with the striking 
achievements of his more aspiring compatriot. 

We should not tell the whole truth, if we did 
not own that we have for a long time been lying 
in wait for a chance to say something about the 
mechanism of walking, because we thought we 
could add something to what is known about it 
from a new source, accessible only within the 
last few years, and never, so far as we know, 
employed for its elucidation, namely, the instan¬ 
taneous photograph. 

The two accomplishments common to all man¬ 
kind are walking and talking. Simple as they 
seem, they are yet acquired with vast labor, and 
very rarely understood in any clear way by 
those who practise them with perfect ease and 
unconscious skill. 

Talking seems the hardest to comprehend. 
Yet it has been clearly explained and success- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


285 


fully imitated by artificial contrivances. We 
know that the moist membranous edges of a 
narrow crevice (the glottis) vibrate as the reed 
of a clarionet vibrates, and thus produce the 
human bleat . We narrow or widen or check or 
stop the flow of this sound by the lips, the 
tongue, the teeth, and thus articulate , or break 
into joints, the even current of sound. The 
sound varies with the degree and kind of inter¬ 
ruption, as the “babble” of the brook with the 
shape and size of its impediments, — pebbles, or 
rocks, or dams. To whisper is to articulate 
without bleating , or vocalizing; to coo as babies 
do is to bleat or vocalize without articulating. 
Machines are easily made that bleat not unlike 
human beings. A bit of India-rubber tube tied 
round a piece of glass tube is one of the simplest 
voice-uttering contrivances. To make a ma¬ 
chine that articulates is not so easy; but we 
remember Maelzel’s wooden children, which 
said, “ Pa-pa ” and “ Ma-ma ” ; and more elab¬ 
orate and successful speaking machines have, we 
believe, been since constructed. 

But no man has been able to make a figure 


286 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


that can walk. Of all the automata imitating 
men or animals moving, there is not one in 
which the legs are the true sources of motion. 
So said the Webers* more than twenty years 
ago, and it is as true now as then. These 
authors, after a profound experimental and 
mathematical investigation of the mechanism 
of animal locomotion, recognize the fact that our 
knowledge is not yet so far advanced that we 
can hope to succeed in making real walking 
machines. But they conceive that the time 
may come hereafter when colossal figures will 
be constructed whose giant strides will not be 
arrested by the obstacles which are impassable 
to wheeled conveyances. 

We wish to give our readers as clear an idea 
as possible of that wonderful art of balanced 
vertical progression which they have practised, 
as M. Jourdain talked prose, for so many years, 
without knowing what a marvellous accomplish¬ 
ment they had mastered. We shall have to 
begin with a few simple anatomical data. 

* Traite de la Mechanique des Organes de la Locomotion. 
Translated from the German in the Encyclopedic, Anatomique. 
Paris, 1843. 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


287 


The foot is arched both longitudinally and 
transversely, so as to give it elasticity, and thus 
break the sudden shock when the weight of the 
body is thrown upon it. The ankle-joint is a 
loose hinge, and the great muscles of the calf 
can straighten the foot out so far that practised 
dancers walk on the tips of their toes. The 
knee is another hinge-joint, which allows the leg 
to bend freely, but not to be carried beyond a 
straight line in the other direction. Its further 
forward movement is checked by two very pow¬ 
erful cords in the interior of the joint, which 
cross each other like the letter X, and are hence 
called the crucial ligaments. The upper ends of 
the thigh-bones are almost globes, which are 
received into the deep cup-like cavities of the 
haunch-bones. They are tied to these last so 
loosely, that, if their ligaments alone held them, 
they would be half out of their sockets in many 
positions of the lower limbs. But here comes 
in a simple and admirable contrivance. The 
smooth, rounded head of the thigh-bone, moist 
with glairy fluid, fits so perfectly into the smooth, 
rounded cavity which receives it, that it holds 


288 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


firmly by suction, or atmospheric pressure. It 
takes a hard pull to draw it out after all the lig¬ 
aments are cut, and then it comes with a smack 
like a tight cork from a bottle. Holding in this 
way by the close apposition of two polished sur¬ 
faces, the lower extremity swings freely forward 
and backward like a pendulum , if we give it a 
chance, as is shown by standing on a chair upon 
the other limb, and moving the pendent one out 
of the vertical line. The force with which it 
swings depends upon its weight, and this is much 
greater than we might at first suppose ; for our 
limbs not only carry themselves, but our bodies 
also, with a sense of lightness rather than of 
weight, when we are in good condition. Acci¬ 
dent sometimes makes us aware how heavy our 
limbs are. An officer, whose arm was shattered 
by a ball in one of our late battles, told us that 
the dead weight of the helpless member seemed 
to drag him down to the earth ; he could hardly 
carry it; it “ weighed a ton,” to his feeling, as 
he said. 

In ordinary walking a man’s lower extremity 
swings essentially by its own weight, requiring 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES . 


289 


little muscular effort to help it. So heavy a 
body easily overcomes all impediments from 
clothing, even in the sex least favored in its cos¬ 
tume. But if a man’s legs are pendulums, then 
a short man’s legs will swing quicker than a tall 
man’s, and he will take more steps to a minute, 
other things being equal. Thus there is a nat¬ 
ural rhythm to a man’s walk, depending on the 
length of his legs, which beat more or less rap¬ 
idly as they are longer or shorter, like metro¬ 
nomes differently adjusted, or the pendulums of 
different time-keepers. Commodore Nutt is to 
M. Bihin in this respect as a little, fast-ticking 
mantel-clock is to an old-fashioned, solemn- 
clicking, upright time-piece. 

The mathematical formulae in which the 
Messrs. Weber embody their results would 
hardly be instructive to most of our readers. 
The figures of their Atlas would serve our pur¬ 
pose better, had we not the means of coming 
nearer to the truth than even their careful 
studies enabled them to do. We have selected 
a number of instantaneous stereoscopic views of 
the streets and public places of Paris and of 
13 s 


290 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


New York, each of them showing numerous 
walking figures, among which some may be 
found in every stage of the complex act we are 
studying. Mr. Darley has had the kindness to 
leave his higher tasks to transfer several of these 
to our pages, so that the reader may be sure 
that he looks upon an exact copy of real human 
individuals in the act of walking. 



Fig. 1. 

The first subject is caught with his legs 
stretched in a stride, the remarkable length of 




ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


291 


which arrests our attention. The sole of the 
right foot is almost vertical. By the action of 
the muscles of the calf it has rolled off from the 
ground like a portion of the tire of a wheel, the 
heel rising first, and thus the body, already 
advancing with all its acquired velocity, and 
inclined forward, has been pushed along, and, 
as it were, tipped over , so as to fall upon the 
other foot, now ready to receive its weight. 



Fig. 2. 

In the second figure, the right leg is bend¬ 
ing at the knee, so as to lift the foot from 


292 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


the ground, in order that it may swing for* 
ward. 



Fig. 3. 


The next stage of movement is shown in the 
left leg of Figure 3. This leg is seen suspend¬ 
ed in air, a little beyond the middle of the 
arc through which it swings, and before it has 
straightened itself, which it will presently do, as 
shown in the next figure. 

The foot has now swung forward, and tend¬ 
ing to swing back again, the limb being straight¬ 
ened, and the body tipped forward, the heel 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


293 


strikes the ground. The angle which the sole 



Fig. 4. 


of the foot forms with the ground increases with 
the length of the stride ; and as this last sur¬ 
prised us, so the extent of this angle astonishes 
us in many of the figures, in this among the 
rest. 

The heel strikes the ground with great force, 
as the wear of our boots and shoes in that part 
shows us. But the projecting heel of the hu¬ 
man foot is the arm of a lever, having the ankle- 



294 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


joint as its fulcrum, and, as it strikes the ground, 
brings the sole of the foot down flat upon it, as 
shown in Figure 1. At the same time the 
weight of the limb and body is thrown upon the 
foot, by the joint effect of muscular action and 
acquired velocity, and the other foot is now 
ready to rise from the ground and repeat the 
process we have traced in its fellow. 

No artist would have dared to draw a walk¬ 
ing figure in attitudes like some of these. The 
swinging limb is so much shortened that the toe 
never by any accident scrapes the ground, if this 
is tolerably even. In cases of partial paralysis, 
the scraping of the toe, as the patient walks, is 
one of the characteristic marks of imperfect 
muscular action. 

Walking, then, is a perpetual falling with a 
perpetual self-recovery. It is a most complex, 
violent, and perilous operation, which we divest 
of its extreme danger only by continual practice 
from a very early period of life. We find how 
complex it is when we attempt to analyze it, 
and we see that we never understood it thor¬ 
oughly until the time of the instantaneous pho- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


295 


tograph. We learn how violent it is, when we 
walk against a post or a door in the dark. We 
discover how dangerous it is, when we slip or 
trip and come down, perhaps breaking or dislo¬ 
cating our limbs, or overlook the last step of a 
flight of stairs, and discover with what headlong 
violence we have been hurling ourselves for¬ 
ward. 

Two curious facts are easily proved. First, 
a man is shorter when he is walking than when 
at rest. We have found a very simple way of 
showing this by having a rod or yardstick placed 
horizontally, so as to touch the top of the head 
forcibly, as we stand under it. In walking rap¬ 
idly beneath it, even if the eyes are shut, to 
avoid involuntary stooping, the top of the head 
will not even graze the rod. The other fact is, 
that one side of a man always tends to outwalk 
the other, so that no person can walk far in a 
straight line, if he is blindfolded. 

The somewhat singular illustration at the 
head of our article carries out an idea which 
has only been partially alluded to by others. 
Man is a ivheel , with two spokes, his legs, and 


296 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


two fragments of a tire, his feet. He rolls suc¬ 
cessively on each of these fragments from the 
heel to the toe. If he had spokes enough, he 
would go round and round as the boys do when 
they “ make a wheel ” with their four limbs for 
its spokes. But having only two available for 
ordinary locomotion, each of these has to be 
taken up as soon as it has been used, and carried 
forward to be used again, and so alternately with 
the pair. The peculiarity of biped-walking is, 
that the centre of gravity is shifted from one 
leg to the other, and the one not employed can 
shorten itself so as to swing forward, passing 
by that which supports the body. 

This is just what no automaton can do. Many 
of our readers have, however, seen a young lady 
in the shop windows, or entertained her in their 
own nurseries, who professes to be this hitherto 
impossible walking automaton, and who calls 
herself by the Ilomeric-sounding epithet Auto- 
peripatetilcos. The golden-booted legs of this 
young lady remind us of Miss Kilmansegg, 
while the size of her feet assures us that she is 
not in any way related to Cinderella. On be- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES . 


297 


ing wound up, as if she were a piece of machin¬ 
ery, and placed on a level surface, she proceeds 
to toddle off, taking very short steps, like a 
child, holding herself very stiff and straight, with 
a little lifting at each step, and all this with a 
mighty inward whirring and buzzing of the en¬ 
ginery which constitutes her muscular system. 

An autopsy of one of her family who fell 
into our hands reveals the secret springs of her 
action. Wishing to spare her as a member of 
the defenceless sex, it pains us to say, that, in¬ 
genious as her counterfeit walking is, she is an 
impostor. Worse than this, — with all our rev¬ 



erence for her brazen crinoline, duty compels us 
to reveal a fact concerning her which will shock 



298 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


the feelings 0 f those who have watched the state- 
ly rigidity of decorum with which she moves 
in the presence of admiring multitudes. She is 
a quadruped ! Inside of her great golden boots, 
which represent one pair of feet, is another 
smaller pair, which move freely through these 
hollow casings. 

Four cams or eccentric wheels impart motion 
to her four supports, by which she is carried 
forward, always resting on two of them, — the 
boot of one side and the foot of the other. Her 
movement, then, is not walking; it is not skat¬ 
ing, which it seems to resemble ; it is more 
like that of a person walking with two crutches 
besides his two legs. The machinery is simple 
enough ; a strong spiral spring, three or four 
cog-wheels and pinions, a fly to regulate the mo¬ 
tion, as in a musical box, and the cams before 
mentioned. As a toy, it or she is very taking 
to grown people as well as children. It is a lit¬ 
eral fact, that the police requested one of our 
dealers to remove Miss Autoperipatetikos from 
his window, because the crowd she drew ob¬ 
structed the sidewalk. 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


299 


We see by our analysis of the process, and by 
the difficulty of imitating it, that walking is a 
much more delicate, perilous, complicated opera¬ 
tion than we should suppose, and well worth 
studying in a practical point of view, to see what 
can be done to make it easier and safer. Two 
Americans have applied themselves to this task: 
one laboring for those who possess their lower 
limbs and want to use them to advantage, the 
other for such as have had the misfortune to 
lose one or both of them. 

Dr. J. O. Plumer , formerly of Portland, now 
of Boston, has devoted himself to the study of 
the foot, and to the construction of a last upon 
which a boot or shoe can be moulded which 
shall be adapted to its form and accommodated 
to its action. 

Most persons know something of the cruel 
injustice to which the feet are subjected, and the 
extraordinary distortions and diseases to which 
they are liable in consequence. The foot’s fin¬ 
gers are the slaves in the republic of the body. 
Their black leathern integument is only the 
mark of their servile condition. They bear the 


300 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


burdens, while the hands, their white masters, 
handle the money and wear the rings. They 
are crowded promiscuously in narrow prisons, 
while each of the hand’s fingers claims its sep¬ 
arate apartment, leading from the antechamber, 
in the dainty glove. As a natural consequence 
of all this, their faculties are cramped, they grow 
into ignoble shapes, they become callous by long 
abuse, and all their natural gifts are crushed and 
trodden out of them. 

Dr. Plumer is the Garrison of these op¬ 
pressed members of the body corporeal. He 
comes to break their chains, to lift their bowed 
figures, to strengthen their weakness, to restore 
them to the dignity of digits. To do this, he 
begins where every sensible man would, by con¬ 
templating the natural foot as it appears in in¬ 
fancy, unspoiled as yet by social corruptions, in 
adults fortunate enough to have escaped these 
destructive influences, and in the grim skeleton 
aspect divested of its outward disguises. We 
will give the reader two views of the latter 
kind, illustrating the longitudinal and transverse 
arches before spoken of. 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES . 


301 




A man who walks on natural surfaces, with 
his feet unprotected by any artificial defences, 
calls the action of these arches into full play at 
every step. The longitudinal arch is the most 
strikingly marked of the two. In some races 
and in certain individuals it is much developed, 
so as to give the high instep which is prized as 
an evidence of good blood. The Arab says that 
a stream of water can flow under his foot with¬ 
out touching its sole. Under the conditions 
supposed, of a naked foot on a natural surface, 
the arches of the foot will Commonly maintain 
their integrity, and give the noble savage or 
barefooted Scotch lassie the elasticity of gait 
which we admire in the children of Nature. 

But as a large portion of mankind tread on 
artificial hard surfaces, especially pavements, 



302 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


their feet are subjected to a very unnatural 
amount of wear and tear. How great this is 
the inhabitants of cities are apt to forget. After 
passing some months in the country, we have 
repeatedly found ourselves terribly lamed and 
shaken by our first walk on the pavement. A 
party of city-folk who landed on a beach upon 
Cape Cod complained greatly to one of the 
natives accompanying them of the difficulty of 
walking through the deep sand. u Ah,” he 
answered, “it’s nothing to the trouble I have 
walking on your city sidewalks.” To save the 
feet from the effects of violent percussion and 
uneven surfaces, they must be protected by 
thick soles, and thick soles require strong upper- 
leather. When the foot is wedged into one of 
these casings, a new boot, a struggle begins be¬ 
tween them, which ends in a compromise. The 
foot becomes more or less compressed or de¬ 
formed, and the boot more or less stretched 
at the points where the counter-pressure takes 
place. 

On the part of the foot, the effects of this 
warfare are liable to show themselves in thick- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


303 


ening and inflammation of the integuments, in 
displacement of the toes, and occasionally in the 
breaking down of the transverse or longitudinal 
arches. On the part of the boot or shoe, there 
is a gradual accommodation which in time fits 
it to the foot almost as if it had been moulded 
upon it, so that a little before it is worn out it 
is invaluable, like other blessings brightening 
before they take their flight. 

Now Dr. Plumer’s improvements proceed 
from two series of data. First , certain theo¬ 
retical inferences from the facts above named. 
Finding the arches liable to break down, he 
supports the transverse arch by making the in¬ 
ner surface of the sole corresponding to it con¬ 
vex instead of concave transversely; he makes 
the middle portion of the sole convex again in 
both directions to support the longitudinal arch, 
and for the same reason extends the heel of the 
boot or shoe forward, so as to support the ante¬ 
rior portion of the heel of the foot. Secondly , 
Dr. Plumer takes an old shoe that has done 
good service, and studies the reliefs and hollows 
which the foot has shaped on the inner surface 


304 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


of its sole. Comparing the empirical results of 
this examination with those based on the ana¬ 
tomical data above given, and finding a general 
coincidence in them, he constructs his last in 
accordance with their joint teachings. Theo¬ 
retically, Dr. Plumer is on somewhat dangerous 
ground. If the arches of the foot are made to 
yield like elliptical springs, why support them ? 
But we subject them to such unnatural condi¬ 
tions by pressure from above over the instep, by 
adding high heels to our boots and shoes, by 
taking away all yielding qualities from the soil 
on which we tread, that very probably they 
may want artificial support as much as the soles 
of the feet want artificial protection. If, now, 
we find that an old, easy shoe has worked the 
inside surface of its sole into convexities which 
support the arches, we are safe in imitating that, 
at any rate. We shall have a new shoe with 
some, at least, of the virtues of the old one. 

This all sounds very well, and the next ques¬ 
tion is, whether it works well. We cannot but 
remember the coat made for Mr. Gulliver by 
the Laputan tailors, which, though projected 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


305 


from the most refined geometrical data and the 
most profound calculations, he found to be the 
worst fit he ever put on his back. We must 
ask those who have eaten the pudding how it 
tastes, and those who have worn the shoe how 
it wears. We have no satisfactory experience 
of our own, having only within a week or two, 
by mere accident, stumbled into a pair of Plu- 
merian boots, and being thus led to look into a 
matter which seemed akin to the main subject 
of this paper. But the author of “ Views 
Afoot,” who ought to be a sovereign authority 
on all that interests pedestrians, confirms from 
his own experience the favorable opinions ex¬ 
pressed by several of our most eminent physi¬ 
cians, after an examination of the principles of 
construction. We are informed that the Plumer 
last has been recently adopted for the use of the 
army. We add our own humble belief that Dr. 
Plumer deserves well of mankind for applying 
sound anatomical principles to the construction 
of coverings for the feet, and for contriving a 
last serving as a model for a boot or shoe which 
is adapted to the form of the foot from the first, 


306 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


instead of having to be broken in by a painful 
series of limping excursions, too often accompa¬ 
nied by impatient and even profane utterances. 

It is not two years since the sight of a person 
who had lost one of his lower limbs was an in¬ 
frequent occurrence. Now, alas ! there are few 
of us who have not a cripple among our friends, 
if not in our own families. A mechanical art 
which provided for an occasional and excep¬ 
tional want has become a great and active 
branch of industry. War unmakes legs, and 
human skill must supply their places as it best 
may. 

Our common idea of a wooden leg is realized 
in the “ peg of the Greenwich pensioner. 
This simple contrivance has done excellent 
service in its time, and may serve a good pur 
pose still in some cases. A plain working-man, 
who has outlived his courting-days and need not 
sacrifice much to personal appearance, may find 
an honest, old fashioned wooden leg, cheap, last¬ 
ing, requiring no repairs, the best thing for his 
purpose. In higher social positions, and at an 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES . 


307 


age when appearances are realities, in the condi¬ 
tion of the Marquis of Anglesea, for instance, it 
becomes important to provide the cripple with a 
limb which shall be presentable in polite society, 
where misfortunes of a certain obtrusiveness 
may be pitied, but are never tolerated under the 
chandeliers. 

The leg invented by Mr. Potts, and bearing 
the name of the “ Anglesea leg,” was long 
famous, and doubtless merited the reputation it 
acquired as superior to its predecessors. But 
legs cannot remain stationary while the march 
of improvement goes on around them, and they, 
too, have moved onward with the stride of 
progress. 

A boy of ten years old, living in a New 
Hampshire village, had one of his legs crushed 
so as to require amputation. The little fellow 
was furnished with a “ peg,” and stumped 
round upon it for ten years. We can imagine 
what he suffered as he grew into adolescence 
under the cross of this unsightly appendage. 
He was of comely aspect, tall, well-shaped, with 
well-marked, regular features. But just at the 


308 


THE HUMAN WHEEL, 


period when personal graces are most valued, 
when a good presence is a blank check on the 
Bank of Fortune, with Nature’s signature at the 
bottom, he found himself made hideous by this 
fearful-looking counterfeit of a limb. It an¬ 
nounced him at the threshold he reached with 
beating heart by a thump more energetic than 
the palpitation in his breast. It identified him 
as far as the eye of jealousy could see his moving 
figure. The “peg” became intolerable, and he 
unstrapped it, and threw himself on the tender 
mercies of the crutch. 

But the crutch is at best an instrument of tor¬ 
ture. It presses upon a great bundle of nerves; 
it distorts the figure; it stamps a character of 
its own upon the whole organism ; it is even 
accused of distempering the mind itself. 

This young man, whose name was “ B. Frank. 
Palmer,” (the abbreviations probably implying 
the name of a distinguished Boston philosopher 
of the last century, whose visit to Philadelphia 
is still remembered in that city,) set himself at 
work to contrive a limb which should take the 
place of the one he had lost, fulfilling its func- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


309 


tions and counterfeiting its aspect so far as possi¬ 
ble. The result was the “ Palmer leg,” one of 
the most unquestionable triumphs of American 
ingenuity. Its victorious march has been un¬ 
impeded by any serious obstacle since it first 
stepped into public notice. The inventor was 
introduced by the late Dr. John C. Warren, in 
1846, to the Massachusetts General Hospital, 
which institution he has for many years supplied 
with his artificial limbs. He received medals 
from the American Institute, the Massachusetts 
Charitable Association, and the Great Exhibi¬ 
tion in New York, and obtained an honorary 
mention from the Royal Commissioners of the 
World’s Exhibition in London, — being the only 
maker of legs so distinguished. These are only 
a few of fifty honorary awards he has received 
at various times. The famous surgeons of Lon¬ 
don, the Societe de Chirurgie of Paris, and 
the most celebrated practitioners of the United 
States have given him their hearty recommen¬ 
dations. So lately as last August, that shrewd 
and skilful surgeon, Dr. Henry J. Bigelow, who 
is as cautious in handling his epithets as he is 


310 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


bold in using the implements of his art, strongly 
advised Surgeon-General Hammond to adopt 
the Palmer leg, which, after a dozen years’ ex¬ 
perience, he had found none to equal. We see 
it announced that the Board of Surgeons ap¬ 
pointed by the Surgeon-General to select the 
best arm and leg to be procured by the Govern¬ 
ment for its crippled soldiers, chose that of Mr. 
Palmer, and that Dr. Hammond approved their 
selection. 

We have thought it proper to show that Mr. 
Palmer’s invention did not stand in need of our 
commendation. Its merits, as we have seen, are 
conceded by the tribunals best fitted to judge, 
and w’e are therefore justified in selecting it as 
an illustration of American mechanical skill. 

We give three views of the Palmer leg: an 
inside view when extended, a second when 
flexed, a third as it appears externally. 

The Committee on Science and the Arts of 
the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania thus 
stated the peculiarities of Mr. Palmer’s inven¬ 
tion : — 

“ First. An ingenious arrangement of springs 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


311 



























312 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


and cords in the inside of the limb, by which, 
when the wearer is in the erect position, the 
limb is extended, and the foot flexed so as to 
present a natural appearance. 

“ Second. By a second arrangement of cords 
and springs in the inside of the limb, the .foot 
and toes are gradually and easily extended, when 
the heel is placed in contact with the ground. 
In consequence of this arrangement, the limping 
gait, and the unpleasant noise made by the sud¬ 
den stroke of the ball of the foot upon the 
ground in walking, which are so obvious in the 
ordinary leg, are avoided. 

“ Third. By a peculiar arrangement of the 
knee-joint, it is rendered little liable to wear, 
and all lateral or rotary motion is avoided. It 
is hardly necessary to remark that any such 
motion is undesirable in an artificial leg, as it 
renders its support unstable.” 

Before reporting some of the facts which we 
have seen, or learned by personal inquiry, we 
must be allowed, for the sake of convenience, to 
exercise the privilege granted to all philosoph¬ 
ical students, of enlarging the nomenclature 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


313 


applicable to the subject of which we are treat¬ 
ing- 

Mail, according to the Sphinx, is successively 
a quadruped , a biped, and a triped. But circum¬ 
stances may change his natural conditions. If 
he loses a leg, he becomes a uniped. If he loses 
both his legs, he becomes a nulliped. If art re¬ 
places the loss of one limb with a factitious sub¬ 
stitute, he becomes a ligniped , or, if we wish to 
be very precise, a uniligniped ; two wooden legs 
entitle him to be called a biligniped. Our termi- 
nology being accepted, we are ready to proceed. 

To make ourselves more familiar with the 
working of the invention we are considering, 
we have visited Mr. Palmer’s establishments in 
Philadelphia and Boston. The distinguished 
“ Surgeon-Artist ” is a man of fine person, as we 
have said. But if he has any personal vanity, 
it does not betray itself with regard to that por¬ 
tion of his organism which Nature furnished him. 
There is some reason to think that Mr. Palmer 
is a little ashamed of the lower limb which he 
brought into the world with him. At least, if 
he follows the common rule and puts that which 


14 


314 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


he considers his best foot foremost, he evidently 
awards the preference to that which was born 
of his brain over the one which he owes to his 
mother. He walks as well as many do who 
have their natural limbs, though not so well as 
some of his own patients. He puts his vegeta¬ 
ble leg through many of the movements which 
would seem to demand the contractile animal 
fibre. He goes up and down stairs with very 
tolerable ease and despatch. Only when he 
comes to stand upon the human limb, we begin 
to find that it is not in all respects equal to the 
divine one. For a certain number of seconds he 
can poise himself upon it; but Mr. Palmer, if 
he indulges in verse, would hardly fill the Ho- 
ratian complement of lines in that attitude. In 
his anteroom were unipeds in different stages of 
their second learning to walk, as lignipeds. At 
first they move with a good deal of awkward¬ 
ness, but gradually the wooden limb seems to 
become, as it were, penetrated by the nerves, 
and the intelligence to run downwards, until it 
reaches the last joint of the member. 

Mr. Palmer, as we have incidentally men- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


315 


tioned, has a branch establishment in Boston, 
to which also we have paid a visit, in order to 
learn some of the details of the manufacture to 
which we had not attended in our pleasant in¬ 
terview with the inventor. The antechamber 
here, too, was the nursery of immature ligni- 
peds, ready to exhibit their growing accomplish¬ 
ments to the inquiring stranger. It almost 
seems as if the artificial leg were the scholar, 
rather than the person who wears it. The man 
does well enough, but the leg is stupid until 
practice has taught it just what is expected from 
its various parts. 

The polite Boston partner, who, if he were 
in want of a customer, would almost persuade 
a man with two good legs to provide himself 
with a third, carried us to the back part of the 
building, where legs are organized. 

The willow , which furnishes the charcoal for 
the gunpowder that blows off limbs, is the wood 
chosen to supply the loss it has helped to oc¬ 
casion. It is light, strong, does not warp or 
“ check ” so much as many other woods, and is, 
as the workmen say, healthy , that is, not irri- 


316 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


tating to the parts with which it is in contact. 
Whether the salicine it may contain enters the 
pores, and invigorates the system, may be a 
question for those who remember the drugs in 
the Sultan’s bat-handle and the remarkable cure 
they wrought. This wood is kept in a dry- 
house with as much care as that intended for 
the manufacture of pianos. It is thoroughly 
steamed also, before using. 

The wood comes in rudely shaped blocks, as 
lasts are sent to the factory, seeming to have 
been coarsely hewed out of the log. The shap¬ 
ing, as we found to our surprise, is all done by 
hand. We had expected to see great lathes, 
worked by steam-power, taking in a rough stick 
and turning out a finished limb* But it is 
shaped very much as a sculptor finishes his 
marble, with an eye to artistic effect, — not so 
much in the view of the stranger, who does not 
look upon its naked loveliness, as in that of 
the wearer, who is seduced by its harmonious 
outlines into its purchase, and solaced with the 
consciousness that he carries so much beauty 
and symmetry about with him. The hollowing- 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


317 


out of the interior is done by wicked-looking 
blades and scoops at the end of long stems, sug¬ 
gesting the thought of dentists’ instruments as 
they might have been in the days of the giants. 
The joints are most carefully made, more par¬ 
ticularly at the knee, where a strong bolt of 
steel passes through the solid wood. Windows, 
oblong openings, are left in the sides of the limb, 
to insure a good supply of air to the extremity 
of the mutilated limb. Many persons are not 
aware that all parts of the surface breathe, just as 
the lungs breathe, exhaling carbonic acid as well 
as water, and taking in more or less oxygen. 

One of the workmen, a pleasant-looking 
young fellow, was himself, we were told, a 
ligniped. We begged him to give us a speci¬ 
men of his walking. He arose and walked 
rather slowly across the room and back. “ Once 
more,” we said, not feeling quite sure which 
was Nature’s leg and which Mr. Palmer’s. So 
he walked up and down the room again, until 
we had satisfied ourselves which was the leg of 
willow and which that of flesh and bone. It is 
not, perhaps, to the credit of our eyes or observ- 


318 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


ing powers, but it is a fact, that we deliberately 
selected the wrong leg. No victim of the thim- 
ble-rigger’s trickery was ever more completely 
taken in than we were by the contrivance of the 
ingenious Surgeon-Artist. 

Our freely expressed admiration led to the 
telling of wonderful stories about the doings of 
persons with artificial legs. One individual was 
mentioned who skated particularly well; another 
who danced with zeal and perseverance; and a 
third who must needs swim in his leg, which 
brought on a dropsical affection of the limb, 
— to which kind of complaint the willow has, 
of course, a constitutional tendency, — and for 
which it had to come to the infirmary where 
the diseases that wood is heir to are treated. 

But the most wonderful monuments of the 
great restorer’s skill are the patients who have 
lost both legs, — nullipeds , as presented to Mr. 
Palmer, bilignipeds, as they walk forth again 
before the admiring world, balanced upon their 
two new-born members. We have before us 
delineations of six of these hybrids between the 
animal and vegetable world. One of them was 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


319 


employed at a railway station near this (Atlan¬ 
tic) city, where he was often seen by a member 
of our own household, whose testimony we are 
in the habit of considering superior in veracity 
to the naked truth as commonly delivered. He 
walked about, we are assured, a little slowly 
and stiffly, but in a way that hardly attracted 
attention. 

The inventor of the leg has not been con¬ 
tented to stop there. He has worked for years 
upon the construction of an artificial arm, and 
has at length succeeded in arranging a mechan¬ 
ism, which, if it cannot serve a pianist or violin¬ 
ist, is yet equal to holding the reins in driving, 
receiving fees for professional services, and simi¬ 
lar easy labors. Where Mr. Palmer means to 
stop in supplying bodily losses it would be pre¬ 
mature to say. We suppose the accidents hap¬ 
pening occasionally from the use of the guillo¬ 
tine are beyond his skill, and spare our readers 
the lively remark suggested by the contrary 
hypothesis. 


It is one of the signs of our advancing Amer- 


320 


THE HUMAN WHEEL, 


ican civilization, that the arts which preserve 
and restore the personal advantages necessary 
or favorable to cultivated social life should have 
reached such perfection among us. American 
dentists have achieved a reputation which has 
sent them into the palaces of Europe to open 
the mouths of sovereigns and princes as freely 
as the jockeys look into those of horses and 
colts. Bad teeth, too common among us, help 
to breed good dentists, no doubt; but besides 
this there is an absolute demand for a certain 
comeliness of person throughout all the decent 
classes of our society. It is the same standard 
of propriety in appearances which lays us open 
to the reproach of caring too much for dress. 
If the national ear for music is not so acute as 
that of some other peoples, the national eye for 
the harmonies of form and color is better than 
we often find in older communities. We have 
a right to claim that our sculptors and painters 
prove so much as this for us. American taste 
was offended, outraged, by the odious “ peg ” 
which the Old-World soldier or beggar was 
proud to show. We owe the well-shaped, 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


321 


intelligent, docile limb, the half-reasoning willow 
of Mr. Palmer, to the same sense of beauty and 
fitness which moulded the soft outlines of the 
Indian Girl and the White Captive in the stu¬ 
dio of his namesake at Albany. 

As we wean ourselves from the Old World, 
and become more and more nationalized in our 
great struggle for existence as a free people, we 
shall carry this aptness for the production of 
beautiful forms more and more into common 
life, which demands first what is necessary and 
then what is pleasing. It is but a step from 
the painter’s canvas to the weaver’s loom, and 
the pictures which are leaving the easel to-day 
will show themselves in the patterns that sweep 
the untidy sidewalks to-morrow. The same 
plastic power which is showing itself in the tri¬ 
umphs of American sculpture will reach the 
forms of our household utensils. The beans 
of Beverly shall yet be baked in vases that 
Etruria might have envied, and the clay pipe 
of the Americanized Milesian shall be a thing 
of beauty as well as a joy forever. We are al¬ 
ready pushing the plastic arts farther than many 

14* u 


322 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


persons have suspected. There is a small town 
not far from us where a million dollars’ worth 
of gold is annually beaten into ornaments for 
the breasts, the fingers, the ears, the necks of 
women. Many a lady supposes she is buying 
Parisian adornments, when Attleborough could 
say to her proudly, like Cornelia, u These are 
my jewels.” The workmen of this little town 
not only meet the tastes of the less fastidious 
classes, to whom all that glisters is gold, but 
they shape the purest metal into artistic and 
effective patterns. "YVhen the Koh-i-noor — 
the Mountain of Light — was to be fashioned, 
it was found to be almost as formidable a task 
as that of Xerxes, when he undertook to 
hew Mount Athos to the shape of man. The 
great crystal was sent to Holland, as the only 
place where it could be properly cut. We 
have lately seen a brilliant which, if not a 
mountain of light, was yet a very respectable 
mound of radiance, valued at some ten or 
twelve thousand dollars, cut in this virgin set¬ 
tlement, and exposed in one of our shop-win¬ 
dows to tempt our frugal villagers. 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


323 


Monsieur Trousseau, Professor in the Medi¬ 
cal School of Paris, delivered a discursive lec¬ 
ture not long ago, in which he soared from the 
region of drugs, his well-known special province, 
into the thin atmosphere of aesthetics. It is the 
influence that surrounds his fortunate fellow-cit- 
zens, he declares, which alone preserves their 
intellectual supremacy. If a Parisian milliner, 
he says, remove to New York, she will so 
degenerate in the course of a couple of years 
that the squaw of a Choctaw chief would be 
ashamed to wear one of her bonnets. 

Listen, O Parisian cockney, pecking among 
the brood most plethoric with conceit, of all the 
coop-fed citizens who tread the pavements of 
earth’s many-chimneyed towns ! America has 
made implements of husbandry which out-mow 
and out-reap the world. She has contrived 
man-slaying engines which kill people faster 
than any others. She has modelled the wave¬ 
slicing clipper, which outsails all your argosies 
and armadas. She has revolutionized naval 
warfare once by the steamboat. She has revo¬ 
lutionized it a second time by planting towers 


324 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


of iron on the elephantine backs of the waves. 
She has invented the sewing-machine to save 
the dainty fingers of your virtuous grisettes from 
uncongenial toil, so that Fifine and Frdtillon 
may have more leisure for self-development. 
She has taught you a whole new system of 
labor in her machinery for making watches and 
rifles. She has bestowed upon you and all the 
world an anodyne which enables you to cut arms 
and legs off without hurting the patient; and 
when his leg is off, she has given you a true 
artist’s limb for your cripple to walk upon, in¬ 
stead of the peg on which he has stumped from 
the days of Guy de Chauliac to those of M. 
Nelaton. She has been contriving well-shaped 
boots and shoes for the very people who, if 
they were your countrymen, would be clumping 
about in wooden sabots. In works of scientific 
industry, hardly to be looked for among so new 
a people, she has distanced your best artificers. 
The microscopes made at Canastota, in the back- 
woods of New York, look in vain for their rivals 
in Paris, and must challenge the best workman¬ 
ship of London before they can be approached in 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES . 


325 


excellence. The great eye that stares into the 
celestial spaces from its workshop in Cambridge 
dives deeper through their clouds of silvery dust 
than any instrument mounted in your observa¬ 
tory in face of the Luxembourg. Our arti¬ 
sans produce no Gobelin tapestries or Sevres 
porcelain as yet; but when your mobs have loot¬ 
ed the Tuileries, our shopkeepers have bought 
up enough specimens to serve them as patterns 
by and by. 

All this is something for a nation which has 
hardly pulled up the stumps out of its city mar¬ 
ket-places. It is sad to reflect that milliners, 
like Burgundy, are spoiled by transportation to 
the head-quarters of American fashion. But 
as the best bonnet of the Empress’s own artist 
would be exploded with yells a couple of seasons 
after the time when it was the rage, the Icarian 
professor’s flight into the regions of rhetoric has 
not led him to any very logical resting-place 
from which he can look down on the aesthetic 
possibilities of New York or other Western cities 
emerging from the semi-barbarous state. 

We are not proud, of course, of any of the 


326 


THE HUMAN WHEEL , 


mechanical triumphs we have won ; they are 
well enough, and show — to borrow the words 
of a distinguished American, whom, during his 
too brief career, we held unrivalled by any ex¬ 
perimenter in the Old World for the depth as 
well as the daring of his investigations — that 
some things can be done as well as others. 

Our specialty is of somewhat larger scope. 
We profess to make men and women out of 
human beings better than any of the joint-stock 
companies called dynasties have done or can do 
it. We profess to make citizens out of men,— 
not citoyens , but persons educated to question all 
privileges asserted by others, and claim all rights 
belonging to themselves, — the only way in 
which the infinitely most important party to the 
compact between the governed and governing can 
avoid being cheated out of the best rights inhe¬ 
rent in human nature, as an experience the world 
has seen almost enough of has proved. We are 
in trouble just now, on account of a neglected 
hereditary melanosis , as Monsieur Trousseau 
might call it. When we recover from the social 
and political convulsion it has produced, and 


ITS SPOKES AND FELLOES. 


327 


eliminate the materies morbi ,— and both theso 
events are only matters of time, — perhaps we 
shall have leisure to breed our own milliners. 
If not, there will probably be refugees enough 
from the Old World, who have learned the 
fashions in courts, and will be glad to turn their 
knowledge to a profitable use for the benefit of 
their republican patronesses in New York and 
Boston. 

We have run away from our subject farther 
than we meant at starting; but an essay on 
legs could hardly avoid the rambling tendency 
which naturally belongs to these organs. 


A VISIT TO THE AUTOCRAT’S 
LANDLADY. 


By the Special Reporter of the “ Oceanic Miscellany.” 


HE door was opened by a stout, red-armed 



X lump of a woman, who, in reply to my 
question, said her name was Bridget, but Biddy 
they calls her mostly. There was a rickety hat- 
stand in the entry, upon which, by the side of a 
school-boy’s cap, there hung a broad-brimmed 
white hat, somewhat fatigued by use, but looking 
gentle and kindly, as I have often noticed good 
old gentlemen’s hats do, after they have worn 
them for a time. The door of the dining-room 
was standing wide open, and I went in. A 
long table, covered with an oil-cloth, ran up and 
down the length of the room, and yellow wooden 
chairs were ranged about it. She showed me 
where the Gentleman used to sit, and, at the 


THE AUTOCRATS LANDLADY . 329 


last part of the time, the Schoolmistress next to 
him. Their chairs were like the rest, but it was 
odd enough to notice that they stood close to¬ 
gether, touching each other, while all the rest 
were straggling and separate. I observed that 
peculiar atmospheric flavor which has been de¬ 
scribed by Mr. Balzac (the French story-teller 
who borrows so many things from some of our 
American leading writers), under the name of 
odeur de pension. It is, as one may say, an 
olfactory perspective of an endless vista of de¬ 
parted breakfasts, dinners, and suppers. It is 
similar, if not identical, in all temperate climates ; 
a kind of neutral tint, which forms the perpetual 
background upon which the banquet of to-day 
strikes out its keener but more transitory aroma. 
I don’t think it necessary to go into any further 
particulars, because this atmospheric character 
has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all 
boarding-houses seem very much alike ; and the 
accident of a hair-cloth sofa, cold, shiny, slip¬ 
pery, prickly, — or a veneered sideboard, with 
a scale off here and there, and a knob or two 
missing, — or a portrait, with one hand half 


330 


A VISIT TO THE 


under its coat, tlie other resting on a pious-look¬ 
ing book, — these accidents, and such as these, 
make no great difference. 

The landlady soon presented herself, and I 
followed her into the parlor, which was a decent 
apartment, with a smart centre-table, on which 
lay an accordion, a recent number of the “ Pac- 
tolian,” a gilt-edged, illustrated book or two, and 
a copy of the works of that distinguished native 
author, to whom I feel very spiteful, on account 
of his having, some years ago, attacked a near 
friend of mine , and whom, on Christian prin¬ 
ciples, I do not mention, — though I have 
noticed, that, where there is an accordion on 
the table, his books are apt to be lying near it. 

The landlady was a “wilted” (not exactly 
withered), sad-eyed woman, of the thin-blooded 
sort, but firm-fibred, and sharpened and made 
shrewd by her calling, so that the look with 
which she ran me over, in the light of a possible 
boarder, was so searching, that I was half put 
down by it. I informed her of my errand, 
which was to make some inquiries concerning 
two former boarders of hers, in whom a portion 


AUTOCRATS LANDLADY. 


331 


of the public had expressed some interest, and 
of whom I should be glad to know certain per¬ 
sonal details, — as to their habits, appearance, 
and so on. Any information she might furnish 
would be looked upon in the light of a literary 
contribution to the pages of the “ Oceanic Mis¬ 
cellany,” and be compensated with the well- 
known liberality of the publishers of that spir¬ 
ited, enterprising, and very popular periodical. 

Up to this point, the landlady’s countenance 
had kept that worried, watchful look, which 
poor women, who have to fight the world single- 
handed, sooner or later grow into. But now 
her features relaxed a little. The blow which 
had crushed her life had shattered her smile, 
and, as the web of shivered expression shot off 
its rays across her features, I fancied that Grief 
had written her face all over with Ws, to mark 
her as one of his forlorn flock of Widows. 

The report here given is partly from the con¬ 
versation held with the landlady at that time, 
and partly from written notes which she fur¬ 
nished me; for, finding that she was to be a 
contributor to the “ Oceanic Miscellany,” and 


332 


A VISIT TO THE 


that in that capacity she would be entitled to 
the ample compensation offered by the liberal 
proprietors of that admirably conducted peri¬ 
odical, — which we are pleased to learn has 
been growing in general favor, and which, the 
public may be assured, no pains will be spared 
to render superior in every respect, — I say, 
finding that she was to be handsomely remu¬ 
nerated, she entered into the subject with great 
zeal, both verbally and by letter. The reader 
will see that I sometimes follow her orthog¬ 
raphy, and sometimes her pronunciation, as I 
may have taken it from writing or from speech. 

THE landlady’s ACCOUNT. 

There is two vacant places at my table, 
which I should be pleased to fill with two gen¬ 
tlemen, or with a gentleman and his wife, or 
any respectable people, be they merried or 
single. It is about the gentleman and the lady 
that used to set in them places, that inquiries is 
bein’ made. Some has wrote, and some has 
spoke, and a good many folks, that was unbe¬ 
known to me, has come in and wanted to see 


AUTOCRATS LANDLADY. 


333 


the place where they used to set, and some 
days it’s been nothin’ but ring, ring, ring, from 
mornin’ till night. 

Folks will be curious about them that has 
wrote in the papers. There’s my daughter 
could n’t be easy no way till she’d got a pro¬ 
feel of one of them authors, to hang up right 
over the head of her bed. That’s the gentle¬ 
man that writes stories in the papers, some in 
the same way this gentleman did, I expect, that 
inquiries is made about. 

I’m a poor woman, that tries to get an honest 
livin’, and works hard enough for it; — lost 
my husband, and buried five children, and have 
two livin’ ones to support. It’s a great loss to 
me, losin’ them two boarders; and if there’s 
anything in them papers he left in that desk 
that will fetch anything at any of the shops 
where they buy such things, I’m sure I wish 
you’d ask the printer to step round here, and 
stop in and see what any of ’em is worth. 
I ’ll let you have one or two of ’em, and then 
you can see whether you don’t know anybody 
that would take the lot. I suppose you ’ll put 


334 


A VISIT TO THE 


what I tell you into shape, for, like as not, I 
sha’n’t write it out nor talk jest as folks that 
make books do. 

This gentleman warn’t no great of a gentle¬ 
man to look at. Being of a very moderate 
dimension, — five foot five he said, but five foot 
four more likely, and I’ve heerd him say he 
did n’t weigh much over a hundred and twenty 
pound. He was light-complected rather than 
darksome, and was one of them smooth-faced 
people that keep their baird and wiskers cut 
close, jest as if they’d be very troublesome 
if they let ’em grow, — instead of layin’ out 
their face in grass, as my poor husband that’s 
dead and gone used to say. He was a well- 
behaved gentleman at table, only talked a good 
deal, and pretty loud sometimes, and had a way 
of turnin’ up his nose when he did n’t like what 
folks said, that one of my boarders, who is a 
very smart young man, said he could n’t stand, 
no how, and used to make faces and poke fun 
at him whenever he see him do it. 

He never said a word aginst any vittles that 
was set before him, but I mistrusted that he was 


AUTOCRATS LANDLADY. 


335 


more partickerlar in his eatin’ than he wanted 
folks to know of, for I’ve knowed him make 
believe to eat, and leave the vittles on his plate 
when he did n’t seem to fancy ’em ; but he was 
very careful never to hurt my feelin’s, and I 
don’t belief he’d have spoke, if he had found 
a tadpole in a dish of chowder. But nothin’ 
could hurry him when he was about his vittles. 
Many’s the time I’ve seen that gentleman keep- 
in’ two or three of ’em settin’ round the break¬ 
fast-table after the rest had swallered their meal, 
and the things was cleared off, and Bridget was 
a-'waitin’ to get the cloth away, —and there that 
little man would set with a tumbler of sugar and 
water, — what he used to call O Sukray, — a- 
talkin’ and a-talkin’, — and sometimes he would 
laugh, and sometimes the tears would come into 
his eyes, — which was a kind of grayish blue 
eyes, — and there he’d set and set, and my boy 
Benjamin Franklin hangin’ round and gettin’ 
late for school and wantin’ an excuse, and an 
old gentleman that’s one of my boarders, a- 
listenin’ as if he wa’n’t no older than my Ben. 
Franklin, and that schoolmistress settin’ jest as 


336 


A VISIT TO THE 


if she’d been bewitched, and you might stick 
pins into her without her hollerin’. He was a 
master hand to talk when he got a-goin’. But 
he never would have no disputes nor long arger- 
ments at my table, and I liked him all the better 
for that; for I had a boarder once that never 
let nothin’ go by without disputin’ of it, till 
nobody knowed what he believed and what he 
did n’t believe, only they was pretty sure he 
did n’t believe the side he was a-disputin’ for, 
and some of ’em said, that, if you wanted him 
to go any partickerlar way, you must do with 
him just as folks do that drive — well, them 
obstinate creeturs that squeal so, — for I don’t 
like to name such creeturs in connexion with 
a gentleman that paid his board regular, and 
w r as a very smart man, and knowed a great deal, 
only his knowledge all laid crosswise, as one of 
’em used to say, after t’ other one had shet him 
up till his mouth wa’n’t of no more use to him 
than if it had been a hole in the back of his 
head. This wa’n’t no sech gentleman. One 
of my boarders used to say that he always said 
exactly what he was a mind to, and stuck his 


AUTOCRATS LANDLADY. 


337 


idees out jest like them that sells pears outside 
their shop-winders, — some is three cents, some 
is two cents, and some is only one cent, and if 
you don’t like, you need n’t buy, but them’s 
the articles and them’s the prices, and if you 
want ’em, take ’em, and if you don’t, go about 
your business, and don’t stand mellerin’ of ’em 
with your thumbs all day till you ’ve sp’ilt ’em 
for other folks. 

He was a man that loved to stick round home 
as much as any cat you ever see in your life. 
He used to say he’d as lief have a tooth pulled 
as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he 
said, when he went away, and never sick when 
he did n’t. Pretty nigh killed himself goin’ 
about lecterin’ two or three winters, — talkin’ 
in cold country lyceums, — as he used to say, — 
goin’ home to cold parlors and bein’ treated to 
cold apples and cold water, and then goin’ up 
into a cold bed in a cold chamber, and cornin’ 
home next mornin’ with a cold in his head as 
bad as the horse-distemper. Then he’d look 
kind of sorry for havin’ said it, and tell how 
kind some of the good women was to him, — 
15 


v 


338 


A VISIT TO THE 


how one spread an edder-down comforter for 
him, and another fixed up somethin’ hot for him 
after the lecter, and another one said, “ There 
now, you smoke that cigar of yours after the 
lecter, jest as if you was at home,” — and if 
they’d all been like that, he’d have gone on 
lectering forever, hut, as it was, he had got pooty 
nigh enough of it, and preferred a nateral death 
to puttin’ himself out of the world by such vio¬ 
lent means as lecterin’. 

He used to say that he was always good com¬ 
pany enough, if he was n’t froze to death, and 
if he was n’t pinned in a corner so’t he could n’t 
clear out when he’d got as much as he wanted. 
But he was a dreadful uneven creetur in his 
talk, and I ’ve heerd a smart young man that’s 
one of my boarders say, he believed he had a 
lid to the top of his head, and took his brains 
out and left ’em up stairs sometimes when he 
come down in the mornin’. — About his ways, 
he was spry and quick and impatient, and, ex¬ 
cept in a good company, — he used to say,— 
where he could get away at any minute, he 
didn’t like to set still very long to once, but 


AUTOCRAT'S LANDLADY\ 


339 


wanted to be off walkin’ or rowin’ round in one 
of them queer boats of his, and he was the solita- 
riest creetur in his goin’s about (except when 
he could get that schoolmistress to trail round 
with him) that ever you see in your life. He 
used to say that usin’ two eyes and two legs at 
once, and keepin’ one tongue a-goin’, too, was 
too sharp practice for him ; so he had a way of 
dodgin’ round all sorts of odd streets, I’ve 
heerd say, where he would n’t meet people that 
would stick to him. 

It didn’t take much to please him. Some¬ 
times it would be a big book he’d lug home, and 
sometimes it would be a mikerscope, and some¬ 
times it would be a dreadful old-lookin’ fiddle 
that he’d picked up somewhere, and kept a- 
screechin’ on, sayin’ all the while that it was 
jest as smooth as a flute. Then ag’in I’d hear 
him laughin’ out all alone, and I’d go up and 
find him readin’ some verses that he’d been 
makin’. But jest as like as not I’d go in 
another time, and find him cryin’, — but he’d 
wipe his eyes and try not to show it, — and it 
was all nothin’ but some more verses he’d been 


340 


A VISIT TO THE 


a-writin’. I Ve heerd him say that it was put 
down in one of them ancient books, that a man 
must cry himself, if he wants to make other 
folks cry; but, says he, you can’t make ’em 
neither laugh nor cry, if you don’t try on them 
feelin’s yourself before you send your work to 
the customers. 

He was a temperate man, and always encour¬ 
aged temperance by drinkin’ jest what he was a 
mind to, and that was generally water. You 
couldn’t scare him with names, though. I re¬ 
member a young minister that’s go’n’ to be, 
that boards at my house, askin’ once what was 
the safest strong drink for them that had to take 
somethin’ for the stomach’s sake and thine awful 
infirmities. Aquafortis , says he,—because you 
know that ’ll eat your insides out, if you get it 
too strong, and so you always mind how much 
you take. Next to that, says he, rum’s the 
safest for a wise man, and small beer for a fool. 

I never mistrusted anything about him and 
that schoolmistress till I heerd they was keepin’ 
company, and was go’n’ to be merried. But I 
might have knowed it well enough by his smart- 


AUTOCRATS LANDLADY. 


341 


in’ himself up the way he did, and partin’ the 
hair on the back of his head, and gettin’ a blue 
coat with brass buttons, and wearin’ them dread¬ 
ful tight little French boots that used to stand 
outside his door to be blacked, and stickin’ round 
schoolma’am, and follerin’ of her with his eyes ; 
but then he was always fond of ladies, and used 
to sing with my daughter, and wrote his name 
out in a blank book she keeps, — them that has 
daughters of their own will keep their eyes on 
’em, — and I ’ve often heerd him say he was 
fond of music and picters, — and she worked a 
beautiful pattern for a chair of his once, that he 
seemed to set a good deal by ; but I ha’n’t no 
fault to find, and there is them that my daughter 
likes and them that likes her. 

As to schoolma’am, I ha’n’t a word to say 
that a’n’t favorable, and don’t harbor no unkind 
feelin’ to her, and never knowed them that did. 
When she first come to board at my house, I 
had n’t any idee she’d live long. She was all 
dressed in black; and her face looked so delicate, 
I expected before six months was over to see a 
plate of glass over it, and a Bible and a bunch 


342 


A VISIT TO THE 


of flowers layin’ on the lid of the — w r ell, I don’t 
like to talk about it; for when she first come, 
and said her mother was dead, and she was alone 
in the world, except one sister out West, and 
onlocked her trunk and showed me her things, 
and took out her little purse and showed me her 
money, and said that was all the property she 
had in the world but her courage and her edu¬ 
cation, and would I take her and keep her till 
she could get some scholars, — I could n’t say 
not one word, but jest went up to her and kissed 
her and bu’st out a-cryin’ so as I never cried 
since I buried the last of them five children that 
lays in the buryin’-ground with their father, and 
a place for one more grown person betwixt him 
and the shortest of them five graves, where my 
baby is waitin’ for its mother. 

[The landlady stopped here and shed a few 
still tears, such as poor women who have been 
wrung out almost dry by fierce griefs lose 
calmly, without sobs or hysteric convulsions, 
when they show the scar of a healed sorrow.] 

-The schoolma’am had jest been killin’ 

herself for a year and a half with waitin’ and 



AUTOCRAT'S LANDLADY. 


343 


tendin’ and watcliin’ with that sick mother that 
was dead now and she was in mournin’ for. 
She did n’t say so, but I got the story out of her, 
and then I knowed why she looked so dreadful 
pale and poor. By and by she begun to get 
some scholars, and then she would come home 
sometimes so weak and faint that I was afraid 
she would drop. One day I handed her a bottle 
of camphire to smell of, and she took a smell of 
it, and I thought she’d have fainted right away. 
Oh, says she, when she come to, I ’ve breathed 
that smell for a whole year and more, and it kills 
me to breathe it again ! 

The fust thing that ever I see pass between 
the gentleman inquiries is made about, and her, 
was on occasion of his makin’ some very search- 
in* remarks about griefs, sech as loss of friends 
and so on. I see her fix her eye steady on him, 
and then she kind of trembled and turned white, 
and the next thing I knew was she was all of a 
heap on the floor. I remember he looked into 
her face then, and seemed to be seized as if it 
was with a start or spasm-like, — but I thought 
nothin’ more of it, supposin’ it was because he 
felt so bad at makin’ her faint away. 


344 


A VISIT TO THE 


Some lias asked me what kind of a young 
woman she was to look at. Well, folks differ as 
to what is likely and what is homely. I ’ve seen 
them that was as pretty as picters in my eyes : 
cheeks jest as rosy as they could be, and hair all 
shiny and curly, and little mouths with lips as 
red as sealin’-wax, and yet one of my boarders 
that had a great name for makin’ marble figgers 
would say such kind of good looks warn’t of no 
account. I knowed a young lady once that a 
man drownded himself because she would n’t 
marry him, and she might have had her pick of 
a dozen, but I did n’t call her anything great in 
the way of looks. All I can say is, that, whether 
she was pretty or not, she looked like a young 
woman that knowed what was good and had 
a nateral love for it, and she had about as clear 
an eye and about as pleasant a smile as any man 
ought to want for every-day company. I’ve 
seen a good many young ladies that could talk 
faster than she could ; but if you’d seen her or 
heerd her when our boardin’-house caught afire, 
or when there was anything to be done besides 
speech-makin’, I guess you’d like to have stood 


AUTOCRAT'S LANDLADY. 


345 


still and looked on, jest to see that young 
woman’s way of goin’ to work. Dark, ruther 
than light; and slim, but strong in the arms, — 
perhaps from liftin’ that old mother about; for 
I Ve seen her heavin’ one end of a big heavy 
chest round that I should n’t have thought of 
touchin’, — and yet her hands was little and 
white. Dressed very plain, but neat, and wore 
her hair smooth. I used to wonder sometimes 
she did n’t wear some kind of ornaments, bein’ 
a likely young woman, and havin’ her way to 
make in the world, and seein’ my daughter 
wearin’ jewelry, which sets her off so much, 
every day. She never would, — nothin’ but a 
breastpin with her mother’s hair in it, and some¬ 
times one little black cross. That made me think 
she was a Roman Catholic, especially when she 
got a picter of the Virgin Mary and hung it up 
in her room ; so I asked her, and she shook her 
head and said these very words, — that she 
never saw a church-door so narrow she could n’t 
go in through it, nor so wide that all the Crea¬ 
tor’s goodness and glory could enter it; and 
then she dropped her eyes, and went to work on 


346 


A VISIT TO THE 


a flannel petticoat she was makin’, — which I 
knowed, but she did n’t tell me, was for a poor 
old woman. 

I’ve said enough about them two boarders, 
but I believe it’s all true. Their places is va¬ 
cant, and I should be very glad to fill ’em with 
two gentlemen, or with a gentleman and his 
wife, or any respectable people, be they merried 
or single. 

I’ve heerd some talk about a friend of that 
gentleman’s cornin’ to take his place. That’s 
the gentleman that he calls “ the Professor,” 
and I’m sure I hope there is sech a man ; only 
all I can say is, I never see him, and none of my 
boarders ever see him, and that smart young 
man that I was speakin’ of says he don’t believe 
there’s no sech person as him, nor that other 
one that he called “ the Poet.” I don’t much 
care whether folks professes or makes poems, 
if they makes themselves agreeable, and pays 
their board regular. I’m a poor woman, that 
tries to get an honest livin’, and works hard 
enough for it; lost my husband, and buried five 
children. 



AUTOCRAT’S LANDLADY. 


347 


Excuse me, dear Madam, I said, — looking at 
my watch, — but you spoke of certain papers 
which your boarder left, and which you were 
ready to dispose of for the pages of the “ Oceanic 
Miscellany.” 

The landlady’s face splintered again into the 
wreck of the broken dimples of better days. — 
She should be much obleeged, if I would look 
at them, she said, — and went up-stairs and got 
a small desk containing loose papers. I looked 
them hastily over, and selected one of the short¬ 
est pieces, handed the landlady a check which 
astonished her, and send the poem thus happily 
obtained as an appendix to my report. If I 
should find others adapted to the pages of the 
spirited periodical which has done so much to 
develop and satisfy the intellectual appetite of 
the American public, and to extend the name 
of its enterprising publishers throughout the 
reading world, I shall present them in future 
numbers of the “ Oceanic Miscellany.” 


A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED 
AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 


AVING just returned from a visit to 



X X this admirable Institution in company 
with a friend who is one of the Directors, we 
propose giving a short account of what we saw 
and heard. The great success of the Asylum 
for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of 
the scholars from which have reached consider¬ 
able distinction, one of them being connected 
with a leading Daily Paper in this city, and 
others having served in the State and National 
Legislatures, was the motive which led to the 
foundation of this excellent Charity. Our late 
distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as 
is well known, bequeathed a large portion of his 
fortune to this establishment, — “ being thereto 
moved,” as his will expressed it, “ by the desire 



AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 349 

of N. Dowing some publick Institution for the 
benefit of Mankind.” Being consulted as to the 
Buies of the Institution and the selection of a 
Superintendent, he replied, that “all Boards 
must construct their own Platforms of opera¬ 
tion. Let them select anyhow and he should be 
pleased.” N. E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in 
compliance with this delicate suggestion. 

The Charter provides for the support of “ One 
hundred aged and decayed Gentlemen-Pun- 
sters.” On inquiry if there was no provision 
for females, my friend called my attention to this 
remarkable psychological fact, namely : — 

There is no such thing as a female 
Punster. 

This remark struck me forcibly, and on re¬ 
flection I found that I never knew nor heard of 
one , though I have once or twice heard a woman 
make a single detached pun, as I have known a 
hen to crow. 

On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum 
grounds, I was about to ring, but my friend held 
my arm and begged me to rap with my stick, 
which I did. An old man with a very comical 


350 A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR 


face presently opened the gate and put out his 
head. 

“ So you prefer Cane to A Bell , do you ? ” 
he said, — and began chuckling and coughing 
at a great rate. 

My friend winked at me. 

“ You ’re here still, Old Joe, I see,” he said 
to the old man. 

“ Yes, yes, — and it’s very odd, considering 
how often I’ve bolted , nights.” 

He then threw open the double gates for us to 
ride through. 

“ Now,” said the old man, as he pulled the 
gates after us, “ you’ve had a long journey.” 

“ Why, how is that, Old Joe ? ” said my 
friend. 

“Don’t you see?” he answered; “there’s 
the Bast hinges on one side of the gate, and 
there ’s the West hinges on t’ other side, — haw ! 
haw ! haw ! ” 

We had no sooner got into the yard than a 
feeble little gentleman, with a remarkably bright 
eye, came up to us, looking very seriously, as if 
something had happened. 


AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 351 

“ The town has entered a complaint against 
the Asylum as a gambling establishment,” he 
said to my friend, the Director. 

“ What do you mean ? ” said my friend. 

“ Why, they complain that there’s a lot o’ 
rye on the premises,” he answered, pointing to 
a field of that grain, — and hobbled away, his 
shoulders shaking with laughter, as he went. 

On entering the main building, we saw the 
Rules and Regulations for the Asylum conspicu¬ 
ously posted up. I made a few extracts which 
may be interesting. 

Sect. I. Of Verbal Exercises. 

5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make 
Puns freely from eight in the morning until ten 
at night, except during Service in the Chapel 
and Grace before Meals. 

6. At ten o’clock the gas will be turned off, 
and no further Puns, Conundrums, or other play 
on words, will be allowed to be uttered, or to be 
uttered aloud. 

9. Inmates who have lost their faculties and 
cannot any longer make Puns shall be permitted 


352 A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR 


to repeat such as may be selected for them by 
the Chaplain out of the work of Mr. Joseph 
Miller . 

10. Violent and unmanageable Punsters, who 
interrupt others when engaged in conversation, 
with Puns or attempts at the same, shall be de¬ 
prived of their Joseph Millers , and, if necessary, 
placed in solitary confinement. 

Sect. III. Of Deportment at Meals. 

4. No Inmate shall make any Pun, or at¬ 
tempt at the same, until the Blessing has been 
asked and the company are decently seated. 

7. Certain Puns having been placed on the 
Index Expurgatorius of the Institution, no In¬ 
mate shall be allowed to utter them, on pain of 
being debarred the perusal of Punch and Vanity 
Fair , and, if repeated, deprived of his Joseph 
Miller. 

Among these are the following: — 

Allusions to Attic salt , when asked to pass the 
salt-cellar. 

Remarks on the Inmates being mustered , etc., 
etc. 


AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 353 


Personal allusions in connection with carrots 
and turnips . 

Attempts upon the word tomato , etc., etc. 

The following are also prohibited, excepting 
to such Inmates as may have lost their faculties, 
and cannot any longer make Puns of their 
own : — 

“- your own hair or a wig”; “it will 

be long enough ,” etc., etc.; “ little of its age,” 
etc., etc. ; — also, playing upon the following 
words: hospital; mayor; pun; pitied; bread; 
sauce , sole , etc., etc., etc. See Index Expur- 
gatorius, printed for use of Inmates. 

The Superintendent, who went round with 
as, had been a noted punster in his time, and 
well-known in the business-world, but lost his 
customers by making too free with their names, 
— as in the famous story he set afloat in ’29 
of forgeries attaching to the names of a noted 
Judge, an eminent Lawyer, the Secretary of the 
Board of Foreign Missions, and the well-known 
Landlord at Springfield. One of the four Jer - 
ries , he added, was of gigantic magnitude. 


w 



354 A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR 


The Superintendent showed some of his old 
tendencies as he went round with us. 

“ Do you know ” — he broke out all at otoce 
— “ why they don’t take steppes in Tartary for 
establishing Insane Hospitals ? ” 

We both confessed ignorance. 

“ Because there are nomad people to be found 
there,” he said, with a dignified smile. 

He proceeded to introduce us to different In¬ 
mates. The first was a middle-aged, scholarly 
man, who was seated at a table with a Web¬ 
ster’s Dictionary and a sheet of paper before 
him. 

“Well, what luck to-day, Mr. Mowzer?” 
said the Superintendent. 

He turned to his notes and read : — 

“ Don’t you see Webster ers in the words 
center and theater? 

“If he spells leather lether , and feather fether, 
is n’t there danger that he ’ll give us a bad spell 
df weather ? 

“ Besides, Webster is a resurrectionist; he 
toes not allow u to rest quietly in the mould. 

“And again, because Mr. Worcester inserts 


AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 355 


an illustration in his text, is that any reason 
why Mr. Webster’s publishers should hitch one 
on in their appendix ? It’s what I call a 
Connect-a-cut trick. 

“ Why is his way of spelling like the floor of 
an oven ? Because it is under bread.” 

“ Mowzer ! ” said the Superintendent, — 
“ that word is on the Index! ” 

“I forgot,” said Mr. Mowzer; — “please 
don’t deprive me of Vanity Fair , this one time, 
Sir. 

“ These are all, this morning. Good day, 
Gentlemen. Then to the Superintendent, — 
Add you, Sir! ” 

The next Inmate was a semi-idiotic-looking 
old man. He had a heap of block-letters before 
him, and, as we came up, he pointed, without 
saying a word, to the arrangements he had 
made with them on the table. They were evi¬ 
dently anagrams, and had the merit of trans¬ 
posing the letters of the words employed without 
addition or subtraction. Here are a few of 
them: — 


356 A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR 


Times. 

Post. 

Tribune. 

World. 

Advertiser. 

Allopathy. 

Homoeopathy. 


Smite ! 

Stop! 

True nib. 

Dr. Owl. 

I KeS VERI DAT. 

{Is true. Read! 

All o’ th’ pay. 

0, the -! 0 ! 0, my ! Pah ! 


The mention of several New York papers led 
to two or three questions. Thus : Whether the 
Editor of the Tribune was H. Gr. really ? If the 
complexion of his politics were not accounted 
for by his being an eager person himself? 
Whether Wendell Fillips were not a reduced 
copy of John Knocks ? Whether a New York 
Feuilletoniste is not the same thing as a Fellow 
down East ? 

At this time a plausible-looking, bald-headed 
man joined us, evidently waiting to take a part 
in the conversation. 

“ Good morning, Mr. Riggles,” said the Su¬ 
perintendent. “ Anything fresh this morning ? 
Any Conundrum ? ” 

“ Nothing of any account,” he answered. 
“ We had hasty-pudding yesterday.” 

“ What has that got to do with conundrums ? ” 
asked the Superintendent. 


AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 357 

“ I asked the Inmates why it was like the 
Prince.” 

“ O ! because it comes attended by its sweet” 
said the Superintendent. 

“ No,” said Mr. Riggles, “ it is because the 
’lasses runs after it.” 

“ Riggles is failing,” said the Superintendent, 
as we moved on. 

The next Inmate looked as if he might have 
been a sailor formerly. 

“ Ask him what his calling was,” said the 
Superintendent. 

“ Followed the sea,” he replied to the ques¬ 
tion put by one of us. “Went as mate in a 
fishing-schooner. ’ ’ 

“ Why did you give it up ? ” 

“ Because I did n’t like working for two-mast¬ 
ers ,” he replied. 

Presently we came upon a group of elderly 
persons, gathered about a venerable gentleman 
with flowing locks, who was propounding ques¬ 
tions to a row of Inmates. 

“ Can any Inmate give me a motto for M. 
Berger ? ” he said. 


358 A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR 


Nobody responded for two or three minutes. 
At last one old man, whom I at once recognized 
as a Graduate of our University, (Anno 1800,) 
held up his hand. 

“ Rem a cue tetigit.” 

“ Go to the head of the Class, Josselyn,” said 
the venerable Patriarch. 

The successful Inmate did as he was told, but 
in a very rough way, pushing against two or 
three of the Class. 

“How is this ? ” said the Patriarch. 

“ You told me to go up jostlin ',” he replied. 

The old gentlemen who had been shoved 
about enjoyed the Pun too much to be angry. 

Presently the Patriarch asked again, — 

“ Why was M. Berger authorized to go to 
the dances given to the Prince ? ” 

The Class had to give up this, and he an¬ 
swered it himself: — 

“ Because every one of his carroms was a 
tick -to the ball." 

“ Who collects the money to defray the ex¬ 
penses of the last campaign in Italy ? ” asked 
the Patriarch. 


AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS 359 


Here again the Class failed. 

“ The war-cloud’s rolling Dun” he answered. 

“ And what is mulled wine made with ? ” 

Three or four voices exclaimed at once, — 

“ Sizzle-y Madeira ! ” 

Here a servant entered, and said “ Luncheon¬ 
time.” The old gentlemen, who have excellent 
appetites, dispersed at once, one of them politely 
asking us if we would not stop and have a bit 
of bread and a little mite of cheese. 

“ There is one thing I have forgotten to show 
you,” said the Superintendent, — the cell for 
the confinement of violent and unmanageable 
Punsters.” 

We were very curious to see it, particularly 
with reference to the alleged absence of every 
object upon which a play of words could pos¬ 
sibly be made. 

The Superintendent led us up some dark 
stairs to a corridor, then along a narrow pas¬ 
sage, then down a broad flight of steps into 
another passage-way, and opened a large door 
which looked out on the main entrance. 

4 ‘ We have not seen the cell for the confine- 


360 A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR 


ment of‘violent and unmanageable’ Punsters,” 
we both exclaimed. 

“ This is the sell! ” he exclaimed, pointing to 
the outside prospect. 

My friend, the Director, looked me in the 
face so good-naturedly that I had to laugh. 

“We like to humor the Inmates,” he said. 
“ It has a bad effect, we find, on their health 
and spirits to disappoint them of their little 
pleasantries. Some of the jests to which we 
have listened are not new to me, though I dare 
say you may not have heard them often before. 
The same thing happens in general society, with 
this additional disadvantage, that there is no 
punishment provided for ‘ violent and unman¬ 
ageable’ Punsters, as in our Institution.” 

We made our bow to the Superintendent and 
walked to the place where our carriage was 
waiting for us. On our way, an exceedingly 
decrepit old man moved slowly towards us, with 
a perfectly blank look on his face, but still ap¬ 
pearing as if he wished to speak. 

“ Look ! ” said the Director, — “ that is our 
Centenarian.” 


A GEL AND DECAYED PUNSTERS. 361 


The ancient man crawled towards us, cocked 
one eye, with which he seemed to see a little, up 
at us, and said, — 

“ Sarvant, young Gentlemen. Why is a — 
a — a — like a — a — a— ? Give it up ? Be¬ 
cause it’s a — a — a — a —.” 

He smiled a pleasant smile, as if it were all 
plain enough. 

“ One hundred and seven last Christmas,” 
said the Director. “ He lost his answers about 
the age of ninety-eight. Of late years he puts 
his whole Conundrums in blank, — but they 
please him just as well.” 

We took our departure, much gratified and 
instructed by our visit, hoping to have some 
future opportunity of inspecting the Records of 
this excellent Charity, and making extracts for 
the benefit of our Readers. 


16 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 



ARLY in the month of November the 


J_> mysterious curtain which has hidden the 

work long in progress at the Boston Music Hall 
will be lifted, and the public will throng to look 
upon and listen to the Great Organ. 

It is the most interesting event in the musical 
history of the New World. The masterpiece 
of Europe’s master-builder is to uncover its 
veiled front and give voice to its long-brooding 
harmonies. The most precious work of Art 
that ever floated from one continent to the other 
is to be formally displayed before a great assem¬ 
bly. The occasion is one of well-earned re¬ 
joicing, almost of loud triumph ; for it is the 
crowning festival which rewards an untold sum 
of devoted and conscientious labor, carried on, 
without any immediate recompense, through a 



THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


363 


long series of years, to its now perfect consum¬ 
mation. The whole community will share in 
the deep satisfaction with which the public- 
spirited citizens who have encouraged this noble 
undertaking, and the enterprising and untiring 
lover of science and art who has conducted it 
from the first, may look upon their completed 
task. 

What is this wondrous piece of mechanism 
which has cost so much time and money, and 
promises to become one of the chief attractions 
of Boston and a source of honest pride to all 
cultivated Americans ? The organ, as its name 
implies, is the instrument , in distinction from all 
other and less noble instruments. We might 
almost think it was called organ as being a part 
of an unfinished organism , a kind of Franken- 
stein-creation, half framed and half vitalized. 
It breathes like an animal, but its huge lungs 
must be filled and emptied by alien force. It 
has a wilderness of windpipes, each furnished 
with its own vocal adjustment, or larynx. 
Thousands of long, delicate tendons govern its 
varied internal movements, themselves obedient 


364 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


to the human muscles which are commanded by 
the human brain, which again is guided in its 
volitions by the voice of the great half-living 
creature. A strange cross between the form 
and functions of animated beings, on the one 
hand, and the passive conditions of inert ma¬ 
chinery, on the other! Its utterance rises 
through all the gamut of Nature’s multitudinous 
voices, and has a note for all her outward 
sounds and inward moods. Its thunder is deep 
as that of billows that tumble through ocean- 
caverns, and its whistle is sharper than that of 
the wind through their narrowest crevice. It 
roars louder than the lion of the desert, and it 
can draw out a thread of sound as fine as the 
locust spins at hot noon on his still tree-top. 
Its clustering columns are as a forest in which 
every music-flowering tree and shrub finds its 
representative. It imitates all instruments ; it 
cheats the listener with the sound of singing 
choirs ; it strives for a still purer note than can 
be strained from human throats, and emulates 
the host of heaven with its unearthly “ voice 
of angels.” Within its breast all the passions of 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


365 


humanity seem to reign in turn. It moans with 
the dull ache of grief, and cries with the sudden 
thrill of pain ; it sighs, it shouts, it laughs, it 
exults, it wails, it pleads, it trembles, it shud¬ 
ders, it threatens, it storms, it rages, it is soothed, 
it slumbers. 

Such is the organ, man’s nearest approach to 
the creation of a true organism. 

But before the audacious conception of this 
instrument ever entered the imagination of man, 
before he had ever drawn a musical sound from 
pipe or string, the chambers where the royal 
harmonies of his grandest vocal mechanism were 
to find worthy reception were shaped in his own 
marvellous structure. The organ of hearing 
was finished by its Divine Builder while yet the 
morning stars sang together, and the voices of 
the young creation joined in their first choral 
symphony. We have seen how the mechanism 
of the artificial organ takes on the likeness of 
life ; we shall attempt to describe the living or¬ 
gan in common language by the aid of such im¬ 
ages as our ordinary dwellings furnish us. The 
unscientific reader need not take notice of the 
words in parentheses. 


366 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT 


The annexed diagram may render it easier to 
follow the description. 



The structure which is to admit Sound as a 
visitor is protected and ornamented at its en¬ 
trance by a light movable awning (the external 
ear). Beneath and within this opens a recess 
or passage (meatus auditorius externus ), at the 
farther end of which is the parchment-like front¬ 
door, D ( membrana tympani ). 

Beyond this is the hall or entry, H, (cavity 
of the tympanum ,) which has a ventilator, V, 
(Eustachian tube,) communicating with the 
outer air, and two windows, one oval, 0, (fenes¬ 
tra ovalis,} one round, r, (fenestra rotunda ,) 
both filled with parchment-like membrane, and 










THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


367 


looking upon the inner suite of apartments (lab¬ 
yrinth) . 

This inner suite of apartments consists of an 
antechamber, A, (vestibule,) an arched cham¬ 
ber, B, (semicircular canals,) and a spiral cham¬ 
ber, S, ( cochlea ,) with a partition, P, dividing it 
across, except for a small opening at one end. 
The antechamber opens freely into the arched 
chamber, and into one side of the partitioned 
spiral chamber. The other side of this spiral 
chamber looks on the hall by the round window 
already mentioned ; the oval window looking on 
the hall belongs to the antechamber. From the 
front-door to the oval window of the antecham¬ 
ber extends a chain, c, (ossicula audittis ,) so 
connected that a knock on the first is trans¬ 
mitted instantly to the second. But as the 
round window of the spiral chamber looks into 
the hall, the knock at the front door will also 
make itself heard at and through that window, 
being conveyed along the hall. 

In each division of the inner suite of apart¬ 
ments are the watchmen, (branches of the au¬ 
ditory nerve,) listening for the approach of 


368 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


Sound. The visitor at length enters the porch, 
and knocks at the front-door. The watchmen 
in the antechamber hear the blow close to them, 
as it is repeated, through the chain, on the win¬ 
dow of their apartment. The impulse travels 
onward into the arched chamber, and startles its 
tenants. It is transmitted into one half of the 
pardoned spiral chamber, and rouses the recum¬ 
bent guardians in that apartment. Some por¬ 
tion of it even passes the small opening in the 
partition, and reaches the watchmen in the 
other half of the room. But they also hear it 
through the round window, not as it comes 
through the chain, but as it resounds along the 
hall. 

Thus the summons of Sound reaches all the 
watchmen, but not all of them through the same 
channels or with the same force. It is not known 
how their several precise duties are apportioned, 
but it seems probable that the watchmen in the 
spiral chamber observe the pitch of the audible 
impulse which reaches them, while the others 
take cognizance of its intensity and perhaps of 
its direction. 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


369 


Such is the plan of the organ of hearing, as 
an architect might describe it. But the details 
of its special furnishing are so intricate and 
minute that no anatomist has proved equal to 
their entire and exhaustive delineation. A 
titled observer, the Marquis Corti, has hith¬ 
erto proved most successful in describing the 
wonderful key-board found in the spiral cham¬ 
ber, the complex and symmetrical beauty of 
which is absolutely astonishing to those who 
study it by the aid of the microscope. The 
figure annexed shows a small portion of this 
extraordinary structure. It is from Kolliker’s 
well-known work on Microscopic Anatomy. 



Enough has been said to show that the ear is 
as carefully adjusted to respond to the blended 
16 * 


X 






























370 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT 


impressions of sound as the eye to receive the 
mingled rays of light; and that as the telescope 
presupposes the lens and the retina, so the organ 
presupposes the resonant membranes, the laby¬ 
rinthine chambers, and the delicately suspended 
or exquisitely spread-out nervous filaments of 
that other organ, whose builder is the Architect 
of the universe, and the Master of all its har¬ 
monies. 

Not less an object of wonder is that curious 
piece of mechanism, the most perfect, within its 
limited range of powers, of all musical instru¬ 
ments, the organ of the human voice. It is the 
highest triumph of our artificial contrivances to 
reach a tone like that of a singer, and among a 
hundred organ-stops none excites such admira¬ 
tion as the vox humana; a brief account of the 
vocal organ will not, therefore, be out of place. 

The principles of the action of the larynx are 
easily illustrated by reference to the simpler 
musical instruments. In a flute or flageolet the 
musical sound is produced by the vibration of a 
column of air contained in its interior. In a 
clarinet or a bassoon another source of sound 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


371 


is added in the form of a thin slip of wood con¬ 
tained in the mouth-piece, and called the reed y 
the vibrations of which give a superadded nasal 
thrill to the resonance of the column of air. 

The human organ of voice is like the clarinet 
and the bassoon. The windpipe is the tube 
containing the column of air. The larynx is 
the mouth-piece containing the reed. But the 
reed is double, consisting of two very thin mem¬ 
branous edges, which are made tense or relaxed, 
and have the interval between them, through 
which the air rushes, narrowed or widened by 
the instinctive, automatic action of a set of little 
muscles. The vibration of these membranous 
edges (chordce vocales ) produces a musical 
sound, just as the vibration of the edge of a 
finger-bowl produces one when a wet finger is 
passed round it. The cavities of the nostrils, 
and their side-chambers, with their light, elastic 
sounding-boards of thin bone, are essential to 
the richness of the tone, as all singers find out 
when those passages are obstructed by a cold in 
the head. 

The human voice, perfect as it may be in 


372 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


tone, is yet always very deficient in compass, as 
is obvious from the fact that the bass voice, the 
barytone, the contralto, and the soprano have 
all different registers, and are all required to 
produce a complete vocal harmony. If we 
could make organ-pipes with movable, self-regu¬ 
lating lips, with self-shortening and self-length¬ 
ening tubes, so that each tube should command 
the two or three octaves of the human voice, a 
very limited number of them would be required. 
But as each tube has but a single note, we un¬ 
derstand why we have those immense clusters 
of hollow columns. As we wish to produce 
different effects, sometimes using the pure flute- 
sounds, at other times preferring the nasal thrill 
of the reed-instruments, we see why some of the 
tubes have simple mouths and others are fur¬ 
nished with vibratory tongues. And, lastly, we 
can easily understand that the great interior 
spaces of the organ must of themselves furnish 
those resonant surfaces which we saw provided 
for, on a small scale, in the nasal passages, — 
the sounding-board of the human larynx. 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


373 


The great organ of the Music Hall is a choir 
of nearly six thousand vocal throats. Its largest 
windpipes are thirty-two feet in length, and a 
man can crawl through them. Its finest tubes 
are too small for a baby’s whistle. Eighty-nine 
stops produce the various changes and combina¬ 
tions of which its immense orchestra is capable, 
from the purest solo of a singing nun to the 
loudest chorus in which all its groups of voices 
have their part in the full flow of its harmonies. 
Like all instruments of its class, it contains sev¬ 
eral distinct systems of pipes, commonly spoken 
of as separate organs, and capable of being 
played alone or in connection with each other. 
Four manuals , or hand key-boards, and two 
pedals, or foot key-boards, command these sev¬ 
eral systems, — the solo organ, the choir organ, 
the swell organ, and the great organ, and the 
piano and forte pedal-organ. Twelve pairs of 
bellows, which it is intended to move by water¬ 
power, derived from the Cochituate reservoirs, 
furnish the breath which pours itself forth in 
music. Those beautiful effects, for which the 
organ is incomparable, the crescendo and dimin - 


374 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


uendo , — the gradual rise of the sound from the 
lowest murmur to the loudest blast, and the 
dying fall by which it steals gently back into 
silence, — the dissolving views , so to speak, of 
harmony, — are not only provided for in the 
swell-organ, but may be obtained by special 
adjustments from the several systems of pipes 
and from the entire instrument. 

It would be anticipating the proper time for 
judgment, if we should speak of the excellence 
of the musical qualities of the great organ before 
having had the opportunity of hearing its full 
powers displayed. We have enjoyed the privi¬ 
lege, granted to few as yet, of listening to some 
portions of the partially mounted instrument, 
from which we can confidently infer that its 
effect, when all its majestic voices find utter¬ 
ance, must be noble and enchanting beyond all 
common terms of praise. But even without 
such imperfect trial, we have a right, merely 
from a knowledge of its principles of construc¬ 
tion, of the pre-eminent skill of its builder, of 
the time spent in its making, of the extraor¬ 
dinary means taken to insure its perfection, 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT 


375 


and of the liberal scale of expenditure which 
has rendered all the rest possible, to feel sure 
that we are to hear the instrument which is and 
will probably long remain beyond dispute the 
first of the New World and second to none 
in the Old in the sum of its excellences and 
capacities. 

The mere comparison of numbers of pipes 
and of stops, or of external dimensions, though 
it gives an approximative idea of the scale of an 
organ, is not so decisive as it might seem as to 
its real musical effectiveness. In some cases, 
many of the stops are rather nominal than of 
any real significance. Even in the Haarlem 
organ, which has only about two thirds as many 
as the Boston one, Dr. Burney says, “ The 
variety they afford is by no means what might 
be expected.” It is obviously easy to multiply 
the small pipes to almost any extent. The 
dimensions of an organ, in its external aspect, 
must depend a good deal on the height of the 
edifice in which it is contained. Thus, the 
vaulted roof of the Cathedral of Ulm permitted 
the builder of our Music-Hall organ to pile the 


376 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


facade of the one he constructed for that edifice 
up to the giddy elevation of almost a hundred 
feet, while the famous instrument in the Town 
Hall of Birmingham has only three quarters of 
the height of our own, which is sixty feet. It 
is obvious, also, that the effective power of an 
organ does not depend merely on its size, but 
that the perfection of all its parts will have quite 
as much to do with it. In judging a vocalist, 
we can form but a very poor guess of the com¬ 
pass, force, quality of the voice, from a mere 
inspection of the throat and chest. In the case 
of the organ, however, we have the advantage of 
being able to minutely inspect every throat and 
larynx, to walk into the interior of the working 
mechanism, and to see the adaptation of each 
part to its office. In absolute power and com¬ 
pass the Music-Hall organ ranks among the 
three or four mightiest'instruments ever built. 
In the perfection of all its parts, and in its 
whole arrangements, it challenges comparison 
with any the world can show. 

Such an instrument ought to enshrine itself 
in an outward frame that should correspond in 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


377 


some measure to the grandeur and loveliness of 
its own musical character. It has been a dream 
of metaphysicians, that the soul shaped its own 
body. If this many-throated singing creature 
could have sung itself into an external form, it 
could hardly have moulded one more expressive 
of its own nature. We must leave to those 
more skilled in architecture the detailed descrip¬ 
tion of that noble facade which fills the eye 
with music as the voices from behind it fill the 
mind through the ear with vague, dreamy pic¬ 
tures. For us it loses all technical character in 
its relations to the soul of which it is the body. 
It is as if a glorious anthem had passed into 
outward solid form in the very ecstasy of its 
grandest chorus. Milton has told us of such a 
miracle, wrought by fallen angels, it is true, but 
in a description rich with all his opulence of 
caressing and ennobling language : — 

“ Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 
Rose, like an exhalation, with the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, 

Built like a temple, where pilasters round 
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 
With golden architrave; nor did there want 
Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures graven.” 


378 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


The structure is of black walnut, and is cov¬ 
ered with carved statues, busts, masks, and 
figures in the boldest relief. In the centre a 
richly ornamented arch contains the niche for 
the key-boards and stops. A colossal mask of 
a singing woman looks from over its summit. 
The pediment above is surmounted by the bust 
of Johann Sebastian Bach. Behind this rises 
the lofty central division, containing pipes, the 
arch over which bears a fine mask of Apollo, and 
crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of Saint 
Cecilia, holding her lyre. On each side of her 
a griffin sits as guardian. This centre is con¬ 
nected by harp-shaped compartments, filled with 
pipes, to the two great round towers, one on 
each side, and each of them containing three 
colossal pipes. These magnificent towers come 
boldly forward into the hall, being the most 
prominent, as they are the highest and stateliest, 
part of the facade. At the base of each a 
gigantic half-caryatid, in the style of the ancient 
hermce , but finished to the waist, bends beneath 
the superincumbent weight, like Atlas under the 
globe. These figures are of wonderful force, 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


379 


the muscular development almost excessive, but 
in keeping with their superhuman task. At 
each side of the base two Y\on-hermce share in 
the task of the giant. Over the base rise the 
round pillars which support the dome and en¬ 
close the three great pipes already mentioned. 
Graceful as these look in their position, half a 
dozen men might creep into one of them and lie 
hidden. A man of six feet high went up a lad¬ 
der, and standing at the base of one of them 
could just reach to put his hand into the mouth 
at its lower part above the conical foot. The 
three great pipes are crowned by a heavily sculp¬ 
tured, ribbed, rounded dome, and this is sur¬ 
mounted, on each side, by two cherubs, whose 
heads almost touch the lofty ceiling. This whole 
portion of the sculpture is of eminent beauty. 
The two exquisite cherubs of one side are play¬ 
ing on the lyre and the lute; those of the other 
side on the flute and the horn. All the reliefs 
that run round the lower portion of the dome 
are of singular richness. We have had an op¬ 
portunity of seeing one of the artist’s photo¬ 
graphs, which showed in detail the full-length 


380 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


figures and the large central mask of this por¬ 
tion of the work, and found them as beautiful 
on close inspection as the originals at a distance. 

Two other lateral compartments, filled with 
pipes and still more suggestive of the harp in 
their form, lead to the square lateral towers. 
Over these compartments, close to the round 
tower, sits on each side a harper, a man on the 
right, a woman on the left, with their harps, all 
apparently of natural size. The square towers, 
holding pipes in their open interior, are lower 
than the round towers, and fall somewhat back 
from the front. Below, three colossal hermce of 
Sibyl-like women perform for them the office 
which the giants and the lion-shapes perform for 
the round towers. The four pillars which rise 
from the base are square, and the dome which 
surmounts them is square also. Above the dome 
is a vase-like support, upon which are disposed 
figures of the lyre and other musical symbols. 

The whole base of the instrument, in the in¬ 
tervals of the figures described, is covered with 
elaborate carvings. Groups of musical instru¬ 
ments, standing out almost detached from the 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


381 


background, occupy the panels. Ancient and 
modern, clustered with careless grace and quaint 
variety, from the violin down to a string of 
sleigh-bells, they call up all the echoes of for¬ 
gotten music, such as the thousand-tongued or¬ 
gan blends together in one grand harmony*. 

The instrument is placed upon a low platform, 
the outlines of w T hich are in accordance with its 
own. Its whole height is about sixty feet, its 
breadth forty-eight feet, and its average depth 
twenty-four feet. Some idea of its magnitude 
may be got from the fact that the wind-ma¬ 
chinery and the swell-organ alone fill up the 
•whole recess occupied by the former organ, 
which was not a small one. All the other por¬ 
tions of the great instrument come forward into 
the hall. 

In front of its centre stands Crawford’s no¬ 
ble bronze statue of Beethoven, the gift of our 
townsman, Mr. Charles Perkins. It might be 
suggested that so fine a work of Art should 
have a platform wholly to itself; but the eye 
soon reconciles itself to the position of the 
Statue, and the tremulous atmosphere which 


332 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


surrounds the vibrating organ is that which 
the almost breathing figure would seem to 
delight in, as our imagination invests it with 
momentary consciousness. 

As we return to the impression produced by 
the grand facade, we are more and more struck 
with the subtile art displayed in its adaptations 
and symbolisms. Never did any structure we 
have looked upon so fully justify Madame de 
Stael’s definition of architecture, as “ frozen 
music.” The outermost towers, their pillars 
and domes, are all square , their outlines thus 
passing without too sudden transitions from the 
sharp square angles of the vaulted ceiling and 
the rectangular lines of the walls of the hall 
itself into the more central parts of the instru¬ 
ment, where a smoother harmony of outline is 
predominant. For in the great towers, which 
step forward, as it were, to represent the mean¬ 
ing of the entire structure, the lines are all 
curved, as if the slight discords which gave 
sharpness and variety to its less vital portions 
were all resolved as we approached its throbbing 
heart. And again, the half fantastic repetitions 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


383 


of musical forms in the principal outlines, — the 
lyre-like shape of the bases of the great towers, 
the harp-like figure of the connecting wings, 
the clustering reeds of the columns, — fill the 
mind with musical suggestions, and dispose the 
wondering spectator to become the entranced 
listener. 

The great organ would be but half known, if 
it were not played in a place fitted for it in 
dimensions. In the open air the sound would 
be diluted and lost; in an ordinary hall the 
atmosphere would be churned into a mere tu¬ 
mult by the vibrations. The Boston Music 
Hall is of ample size to give play to the waves 
of sound, yet not so large that its space will not 
be filled and saturated with the overflowing 
resonance. It is one hundred and thirty feet 
in length by seventy-eight in breadth and sixty- 
five in height, being thus of somewhat greater 
dimensions than the celebrated Town Hall 
of Birmingham. At the time of building it, 
( 1852 ,) its great height was ordered partly 
with reference to the future possibility of its 
being furnished with a large organ. It will be 


384 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


observed that the three dimensions above given 
are all multiples of the same number, thirteen, 
the length being ten times, the breadth six times 
and the height five times this number. This is 
in accordance with Mr. Scott Russell’s recom¬ 
mendation, which has been explained by the 
fact that vibrating solids divide into harmonic 
lengths , separated by nodal points of rest, and 
that these last are equally distributed at aliquot 
parts of its whole length. If the whole extent 
of the walls be in vibration, its angles should 
come in at the nodal points in order to avoid 
the confusion arising from different vibrating 
lengths ; and for this reason they are placed at 
aliquot parts of its entire length. Thus the hall 
is itself a kind of passive musical instrument, or 
at least a sounding-board, constructed on theo¬ 
retical principles. Whatever is thought of the 
theory, it proves in practice to possess the excel¬ 
lence which is liable to be lost in the construction 
of the best-designed edifice. 

We have thus attempted to give our readers 
some imperfect idea of the great instrument, 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


385 


illustrating it by the objects of comparison with 
which we are most familiar, and leaving to 
others the more elaborate work of subjecting it 
to a thorough artistic survey, and the rigorous 
analysis necessary to bring out the various de¬ 
grees of excellence in its special qualities, which, 
as in a human character, will be found to mark 
its individuality. We shall proceed to give 
some account of the manner in which the plan 
of obtaining the best instrument the Old World 
could furnish to the New was formed, matured, 
and carried into successful execution. 

It is mainly to the persistent labors of a single 
individual that our community is indebted for 
the privilege it now enjoys in possessing an 
instrument of the supreme order, such as make 
cities illustrious by their presence. That which 
is on the lips of all it can wrong no personal 
susceptibilities to tell in print; and when we say 
that Boston owes the Great Organ chiefly to 
the personal efforts of the present President of 
the Music-Hall Association, Dr. J. Baxter Up- 
ham, the statement is only for the information 
of distant readers. 


17 


Y 


386 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


Dr. Upham is widely known to the medical 
profession in connection with important contri¬ 
butions to practical science. His researches on 
typhus-fever, as observed by him at different 
periods, during and since the years 1847 and 
1848, in this country, and as seen at Dublin and 
in the London Fever Hospital, were recognized 
as valuable contributions to the art of medicine. 
More recently, as surgeon in charge of the Stan¬ 
ley General Hospital, Eighteenth Army Corps, 
he has published an account of the “ Congestive 
Fever” prevailing at Newbern, North Carolina, 
during the winter and spring of 1862-63. We 
must add to these practical labors the record of 
his most ingenious and original investigations 
of the circulation in the singular case of M. 
Groux, which had puzzled so many European 
experts, and to which, with the tact of a musi¬ 
cian, he applied the electro-magnetic telegraphic 
apparatus so as to change the rapid consecutive 
motions of different parts of the heart, which 
puzzled the eye, into successive sounds of a 
character which the ear could recognize in their 
order. It was during these experiments, many 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


387 


of which we had the pleasure of witnessing, 
that the “ side-show ” was exhibited of counting 
the patient’s pulse, through the wires, at the 
Observatory in Cambridge, while it was beating 
in Dr. Upham’s parlor in Boston. Nor should 
we forget that other ingenious contrivance of his, 
the system of sound-signals , devised during his 
recent term of service as surgeon, and applied 
with the most promising results, as a means of 
intercommunication between different portions 
of the same armament. 

In the summer of 1853, less than a year after 
the Music Hall was opened to the public, Dr. 
Upham, who had been for some time occupied 
with the idea of procuring an organ worthy of 
the edifice, made a tour in Europe with the 
express object of seeing some of the most famous 
instruments of the Continent and of Great 
Britain. He examined many, especially in Ger¬ 
many, and visited some of the great organ- 
builders, going so far as to obtain specifications 
from Mr. Walcker of Ludwigsburg, and from 
Weigl, his pupil at Stuttgart. On returning to 
this country, he brought the proposition of pro- 


388 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


curing a great instrument in Europe in various 
ways before the public, among the rest by his 
“ Reminiscences of a Summer Tour,” published 
in “ Dwight’s Journal of Music.” After this 
he laid the matter before the members of the 
Harvard Musical Association, and, having thus 
gradually prepared the way, presented it for 
consideration before the Board of Directors of 
the Music-Hall Association. A committee was 
appointed “ to consider.” There was some 
division of opinion as to the expediency of the 
more ambitious plan of sending abroad for a 
colossal instrument. There was a majority re¬ 
port in its favor, and a verbal minority report 
advocating a more modest instrument of home 
manufacture. Then followed the anaconda- 
torpor which marks the process of digestion of a 
huge and as yet crude project by a multi ver¬ 
tebrate corporation. 

On the first of March, 1856, the day of the 
inauguration of Beethoven’s statue, a subscrip¬ 
tion-paper was started, headed by Dr. Upham, 
for raising the sum of ten thousand dollars. At 
a meeting in June the plan was brought before 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


389 


the stockholders of the Music Hall, who unani¬ 
mously voted to appropriate ten thousand dollars 
and the proceeds of the old organ, on condition 
that fifteen thousand dollars should be raised by 
private subscription. In October it was reported 
to the Directors that ten thousand dollars of this 
sum were already subscribed, and Dr. Upham, 
President of the Board, pledged himself to raise 
the remainder on certain conditions, which were 
accepted. He w r as then authorized to go abroad 
to investigate the whole subject, with full powders 
to select the builder and to make the necessary 
contracts. 

Dr. Upham had already made an examina¬ 
tion of the best organs and organ-factories in 
New England, New York, and elsewhere in this 
country, and received several specifications and 
plans from builders. He proceeded at once, 
therefore, to Europe, examined the great English 
instruments, made the acquaintance of Mr. Hop¬ 
kins, the well-known organist and recognized 
authority on all matters pertaining to the instru¬ 
ment, and took lessons of him in order to 
know better the handling of the keys and the 


390 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


resources of the instrument. In his company, 
Dr. Upham examined some of the best instru¬ 
ments in London. He made many excursions 
among the old churches of Sir Christopher 
Wren’s building, where are to be found the fine 
organs of “ Father Smith,” John Snetzler, and 
other famous builders of the past. He visited the 
workshops of Hill, Gray and Davidson, Willis, 
Robson and others. He made a visit to Oxford 
to examine the beautiful organ in Trinity Col¬ 
lege. He found his way into the organ-lofts of 
St. Paul’s, of Westminster Abbey, and the Tem¬ 
ple Church, during the playing at morning and 
evening service. He inspected Thompson’s 
enharmonic organ, and obtained models of va¬ 
rious portions of organ-structure. 

From London Dr. Upham went to Holland, 
where he visited the famous instruments at 
Haarlem, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam, and the 
organ-factory at Utrecht, the largest and best in 
Holland. Thence to Cologne, where, as well 
as at Utrecht, he obtained plans and schemes of 
instruments; to Hamburg, where are fine old 
organs, some of them built two or three centu- 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


391 


ries ago; to Lubeck, Dresden, Breslau, Leipsic, 
Halle, Merseburg. Here he found a splendid 
organ built by Ladergast, whose instruments 
excel especially in their tone effects. A letter 
from Liszt, the renowned pianist, recommended 
this builder particularly to Dr. Upham’s choice. 
At Frankfort and at Stuttgart he found two 
magnificent instruments, built by Walcker of 
Ludwigsburg, to which place he repaired in 
order to examine his factories carefully, for the 
second time. Thence the musical tourist pro¬ 
ceeded to Ulm, where is the sumptuous organ, 
the work of the same builder, ranking, we be¬ 
lieve, first in point of dimensions of all in the 
world. Onward still, to Munich, Bamberg, 
Augsburg, Nuremberg, along the Lake of Con¬ 
stance to Weingarten, where is that great organ 
claiming to have sixty-six stops and six thousand 
six hundred and sixty-six pipes ; to Freyburg, 
in Switzerland, where is another great organ, 
noted for the rare beauty of its vox-humana stop, 
the mechanism of which had been specially stud¬ 
ied by Mr. Walcker, who explained it to Dr. 
Upham. 


392 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


Returning to Ludwigsburg, Dr. Upham re¬ 
ceived another specification from Mr. Walcker. 
He then passed some time at Frankfort examin¬ 
ing the specifications already received, and the 
additional ones which came to him while there. 

At last, by the process of exclusion, the 
choice was narrowed down to three names, 
Schultze, Ladergast, and Walcker, then to the 
two last. There was still a difficulty in decid¬ 
ing between these. Dr. Upham called in Mr. 
Walcker’s partner and son, who explained every 
point on which he questioned them with the 
utmost minuteness. Still undecided, he revisited 
Merseburg and Weissenfels, to give Ladergast’s 
instruments another trial. The result was that 
he asked Mr. Walcker for a third specification, 
with certain additions and alterations which he 
named. This he received, and finally decided 
in his favor, — but with the condition that Mr. 
Walcker should meet him in Paris for the pur¬ 
pose of examining the French organs with refer¬ 
ence to any excellences of which he might avail 
himself, and afterwards proceed to London and 
inspect the English instruments with the same 
object. 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


393 


The details of this joint tour are very inter¬ 
esting, but we have not space for them. The 
frank enthusiasm with which the great German 
organ-builder was welcomed in France contrasted 
forcibly with the quiet, not to say cool, way in 
which the insular craftsmen received him, grad¬ 
ually, however, warming, and at last, with a 
certain degree of effort, admitting him to their 
confidence. 

A fortnight was spent by Dr. Upham in com¬ 
pany with Walcker and Mr. Hopkins in study¬ 
ing and perfecting the specification, which was 
at last signed in German and English, and 
stamped with the notarial seal, and thus the 
contract made binding. 

A long correspondence relating to the instru¬ 
ment followed between Dr. Upham, the builder, 
and Mr. Hopkins, ending only with the ship¬ 
ment of the instrument. A most interesting 
part of this was Dr. Upham’s account of his 
numerous original experiments with the natural 
larynx, made with reference to determining the 
conditions requisite for the successful imitation 
of the human voice in the arrangement called 
17 * 


394 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


vox Jiumana. Mr. Waleker has availed himself 
of the results of these experiments in the stop as 
made for this organ, but with what success we 
are unable to say, as the pipes have not been set 
in place at the time of our writing. As there is 
always great curiosity to hear this particular 
stop, we will guard our readers against disap¬ 
pointment by quoting a few remarks about that 
of the Haarlem organ, made by the liveliest of 
musical writers, Dr. Burney. 

“ As to the vox humana , which is so cele¬ 
brated, it does not at all resemble a human 
voice, though a very good stop of the kind ; but 
the world is very apt to be imposed upon by 
names ; the instant a common hearer is told that 
an organist is playing upon a stop which resem¬ 
bles the human voice, he supposes it to be very 
fine, and never inquires into the propriety of the 
name, or exactness of the imitation. However, 
with respect to our own feelings, we must con¬ 
fess, that, of all the stops which we have yet 
heard, that have been honored with the appella¬ 
tion of vox humana , no one in the treble part 
has ever reminded us of anything human, so 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


395 


much as the cracked voice of an old woman of 
ninety, or, in the lower parts, of Punch singing 
through a comb.” Let us hope that this most 
irreverent description will not apply to the vox 
Jiumana of our instrument, after all the science 
and skill that have been expended upon it. 
Should it prove a success like that of the Frey- 
burg organ, there will be pilgrimages from the 
shores of the Pacific and the other side of the 
Atlantic to listen to the organ that can sing, 
and what can be a more miraculous triumph of 
art than to cheat the ear with such an enchant¬ 
ing delusion. 

Before the organ could be accepted, it was 
required by the terms of the contract to be set 
up at the factory, and tested by three persons ;* 
one to be selected by the Organ Committee of 
the Music-Hall Association, one by the builder, 
and a third to be chosen by them. Having been 
approved by these judges, and also by the State- 
Commissioner of Wiirtemberg, according to the 
State ordinance, the result of the trial was 
transmitted to the President and Directors of 
the Music-Hall Association, and the organ was 
accepted. 


396 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


The war broke out in the mean time, and 
there were fears lest the vessel in which the 
instrument might be shipped should fall a 
victim to some of the British corsairs sailing 
under Confederate colors. But the Dutch brig 
“ Presto,” though slow, was safe from the li¬ 
censed pirates, unless an organ could be shown 
to be contraband of war. She was out so long, 
however, — nearly three months from Rotter¬ 
dam, — that the insurance-office presidents 
shook their heads over her, fearing that she 
had gone down with all her precious freight. 

“ At length,” to borrow Dr. Upham’s words, 
“ one stormy Sunday in March she w T as tele¬ 
graphed from the marine station down in the 
bay, and the next morning, among the marine 
intelligence, in the smallest possible type, might 
be read the invoice of her cargo thus: — 

“ ‘ Sunday Mar. 22 

‘“Arr.'Dutch brig Presto, Van Wyngarten, Rotterdam, Jan. 1 Helvoet. 10th 
Had terrific gales from SW the greater part of the passage. 40 casks gin JD&M 
Williams 8 sheep Chenery & Co 200 bags cotfee 2 casks herrings 1 case cheese W. 
Winsel 1 organ J B Upham 20 pipes 6 casks gin J D Richards 6 casks nutmegs J 
Schumaker 20 do gin 600 bags chickory root order,’ etc., etc. 

And this w r as the heralding of this greatest 
marvel of a high and noble art, after the labor 
of seven years bestowed upon it, having been 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT 


397 


tried and pronounced complete by the most fas¬ 
tidious and competent of critics, the wonder and 
admiration of music-loving Germany, the pride 
of Wiirtemberg, bringing a new phase of civil¬ 
ization to our shores in the darkest hour of our 
country’s trouble.” 

It remains to give a brief history of the con¬ 
struction of the grand and imposing architectural 
frame which we have already attempted to de¬ 
scribe. Many organ-fronts were examined with 
reference to their effects, during Dr. Upham’s 
visits, of which we have traced the course, and 
photographs and sketches obtained for the same 
purpose. On returning, the task of procuring 
a fitting plan was immediately undertaken. We 
need not detail the long series of trials which 
were necessary before the requirements of the 
President and Directors of the Music-Hall Asso¬ 
ciation were fully satisfied. As the result of 
these, it was decided that the work should be 
committed to the brothers Herter, of New York, 
European artists, educated at the Royal Acad¬ 
emy of Art in Stuttgart. The general outline 


398 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


of the facade followed a design made by Mr. 
Hammatt Billings, to whom also are due the 
drawings from which the Saint Cecilia and 
the two groups of cherubs upon the round towers 
were modelled. These figures were executed at 
Stuttgart; the other carvings were all done in 
New York, under Mr. Herter’s direction, by 
Italian and German artists, one of whom had 
trained his powers particularly to the shaping of 
colossal figures. In the course of the work, one 
of the brothers Herter visited Ludwigsburg for 
the special purpose of comparing his plans with 
the structure to which they were to be adapted, 
and was received with enthusiasm, the design 
for the front being greatly admired. 

The contract was made with Mr. Herter in 
April, 1860, and the work, having been ac¬ 
cepted, was sent to Boston during the last winter, 
and safely stored in the lecture-room beneath 
the Music Hall. In March the Grreat Work 
arrived from Germany, and was stored in the 
hall above. 


“ The seven years’ task is done, — the danger 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT. 


899 


from flood and fire so far escaped, — the gantlet 
of the pirates safely run, — the perils of the sea 
and the rail surmounted by the qood Providence 
of God .” 

The devout gratitude of the President of the 
Association, under whose auspices this great un¬ 
dertaking has been successfully carried through, 
will be shared by all lovers of Art and all the 
friends of American civilization and culture. 
We cannot naturalize the Old World cathedrals* 
for they were the architectural embodiment of a 
form of worship belonging to other ages and 
differently educated races. But the organ was 
only lent to human priesthoods for their masses 
and requiems; it belongs to Art, a religion of 
which God himself appoints the high-priests. 
At first it appears almost a violence to transplant 
it from those awful sanctuaries, out of whose 
arches its forms seemed to grow, and whose 
echoes seemed to hold converse with it, into our 
gay and gilded halls, to utter its majestic voice 
before the promiscuous multitude. Our hasty 
impression is a wrong one. We have under¬ 
taken, for the first time in the world’s history, 


400 


THE GREAT INSTRUMENT 


to educate a nation. To teach a people to 
know the Creator in His glorious manifestations 
through the wondrous living organs is a task for 
which no implement of human fabrication is too 
sacred ; for all true culture is a form of worship, 
and to every rightly ordered mind a setting forth 
of the Divine glory. 

This consummate work of science and skill 
reaches us in the midst of the discordant sounds 
of war, the prelude of that blessed harmony 
which will come whenever the jarring organ of 
the State has learned once more to obey its 
keys. 

God grant that the Miserere of a people in 
its anguish may soon be followed by the Te 
Deum of a redeemed nation ! 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL.* 


I T is our first impulse, upon this returning 
day of our nation’s birth, to recall what¬ 
ever is happiest and noblest in our past history, 
and to join our voices in celebrating the states¬ 
men and the heroes, the men of thought and the 
men of action, to whom that history owes its 
existence. In other years this pleasing office 
may have been all that was required of the holi¬ 
day speaker. But to-day, when the very life of 
the nation is threatened, when clouds are thick 
about us, and men’s hearts are throbbing with 
passion, or failing with fear, it is the living ques¬ 
tion of the hour, and not the dead story of the 
past, which forces itself into all minds, and will 
find unrebuked debate in all assemblies. 


* An Oration delivered before the City Authorities of Boston, 
on the 4th of July, 1863. 


402 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


In periods of disturbance like the present, 
many persons who sincerely love their country 
and mean to do their duty to her disappoint the 
hopes and expectations of those who are actively 
■working in her cause. They seem to have lost 
whatever moral force they may have once pos¬ 
sessed, and to go drifting about from one profit¬ 
less discontent to another, at a time when every 
citizen is called upon for cheerful, ready service. 
It is because their minds are bewildered, and 
they are no longer truly themselves. Show 
them the path of duty, inspire them with hope 
for the future, lead them upwards from the tur¬ 
bid stream of events to the bright, translucent 
springs of eternal principles, strengthen their 
trust in humanity and their faith in God, and 
you may yet restore them to their manhood and 
their country. 

At all times, and especially on this anniver¬ 
sary of glorious recollections and kindly enthu¬ 
siasms, we should try to judge the weak and 
wavering souls of our brothers fairly and gener¬ 
ously. The conditions in which our vast com¬ 
munity of peace-loving citizens find themselves 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


403 


are new and unprovided for. Our quiet burgh¬ 
ers and farmers are in the position of river-boats 
blown from their moorings out upon a vast ocean, 
where such a typhoon is raging as no mariner 
who sails its waters ever before looked upon* 
If their beliefs change with the veering of the 
blast, if their trust in their fellow-men, and in 
the course of Divine Providence, seems well- 
nigh shipwrecked, we must remember that they 
were taken unawares, and without the prepara¬ 
tion which could fit them to struggle with these 
tempestuous elements. In times like these the 
faith is the man ; and they to whom it is given 
in larger measure owe a special duty to those 
who for want of it are faint at heart, uncertain 
in speech, feeble in effort, and purposeless in 
aim. 

Assuming without argument a few simple 
propositions, — that self-government is the natu¬ 
ral condition of an adult society, as distinguished 
from the immature state, in which the temporary 
arrangements of monarchy and oligarchy are 
tolerated as conveniences ; that the end of all 
social compacts is, or ought to be, to give every 


404 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


child born into the world the fairest chance to 
make the most and the best of itself that laws 
can give it; that Liberty, the one of the two 
claimants who swears that her babe shall not be 
split in halves and divided between them, is the 
true mother of this blessed Union; that the 
contest in which we are engaged is one of prin¬ 
ciples overlaid by circumstances ; that the longer 
we fight, and the more we study the movements 
of events and ideas, the more clearly we find 
the moral nature of the cause at issue emerging 
in the field and in the study ; that all honest 
persons with average natural sensibility, with re¬ 
spectable understanding, educated in the school 
of northern teaching, will have eventually to 
range themselves in the armed or unarmed host 
which fights or pleads for freedom, as against 
every form of tyranny ; if not in the front rank 
now, then in the rear rank by and by ; — assum¬ 
ing these propositions, as many, perhaps most of 
us, are ready to do, and believing that the more 
they are debated before the public the more they 
will gain converts, we owe it to the timid and the 
doubting to keep the great questions of the time 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


405 


in unceasing and untiring agitation. They must 
be discussed, in all ways consistent with the pub¬ 
lic welfare, by different classes of thinkers; by 
priests and laymen ; by statesmen and simple 
voters ; by moralists and lawyers ; by men of 
science and uneducated hand-laborers ; by men 
of facts and figures, and by men of theories and 
aspirations ; in the abstract and in the concrete ; 
discussed and rediscussed every month, every 
week, every day, and almost every hour, as 
the telegraph tells us of some new upheaval or 
subsidence of the rocky base of our political 
order. 

Such discussions may not be necessary to 
strengthen the convictions of the great body of 
loyal citizens. They may do nothing toward 
changing the views of those, if such there be, 
as some profess to believe, who follow politics as 
a trade. They may have no hold upon that 
class of persons who are defective in moral sen¬ 
sibility, just as other persons are wanting in an 
ear for music. But for the honest, vacillating 
minds, the tender consciences supported by the 
tremulous knees of an infirm intelligence, the 


406 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


timid compromisers who are always trying to 
curve the straight lines and round the sharp 
angles of eternal law, the continual debate of 
these living questions is the one offered means 
of grace and hope of earthly redemption. And 
thus a true, unhesitating patriot may be willing 
to listen with patience to arguments which he 
does not need, to appeals which have no special 
significance for him, in the hope that some less 
clear in mind or less courageous in temper may 
profit by them. 

As we look at the condition in which we find 
ourselves on this fourth day of July, 1863, at 
the beginning of the Eighty-eighth Year of 
American Independence, we may well ask our¬ 
selves what right we have to indulge in public 
rejoicings. If the war in which we are engaged 
is an accidental one, which might have been 
avoided but for our fault; if it is for any ambi¬ 
tious or unworthy purpose on our part; if it is 
hopeless, and we are madly persisting in it; if 
it is our duty and in our power to make a safe 
and honorable peace, and we refuse to do it; if 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


407 


our free institutions are in danger of becoming 
subverted, and giving place to an irresponsible 
tyranny ; if we are moving in the narrow cir¬ 
cles which are to ingulf us in national ruin, — 
then we had better sing a dirge, and leave this 
idle assemblage, and hush the noisy cannon 
which are reverberating through the air, and 
tear down the scaffolds which are soon to blaze 
with fiery symbols ; for it is mourning and not 
joy that should cover the land ; there should be 
silence, and not the echo of noisy gladness, in 
our streets ; and the emblems with which we 
tell our nation’s story and prefigure its future 
should be traced, not in fire, but in ashes. 

If, on the other hand, this war is no acci¬ 
dent, but an inevitable result of long-incubating 
causes ; inevitable as the cataclysms that swept 
away the monstrous births of primeval nature ; 
if it is for no mean, unworthy end, but for na¬ 
tional life, for liberty everywhere, for humanity, 
for the kingdom of God on earth ; if it is not 
hopeless, but only growing to such dimensions 
that the world shall remember the final triumph 
of right throughout all time ; if there is no safe 


408 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


and honorable peace for us but a peace pro¬ 
claimed from the capital of every revolted pro¬ 
vince in the name of the sacred, inviolable 
Union ; if the fear of tyranny is a phantasm, 
conjured up by the imagination of the weak, 
acted on by the craft of the cunning; if so far 
from circling inward to the gulf of our perdition, 
the movement of past years is reversed, and 
every revolution carries us farther and farther 
from the centre of the vortex, until, by God’s 
blessing, we shall soon find ourselves freed from 
the outermost coil of the accursed spiral; if all 
these things are true; if we may hope to make 
them seem true, or even probable, to the doubt¬ 
ing soul, in an hour’s discourse, — then we may 
join without madness in the day’s exultant fes¬ 
tivities ; the bells may ring, the cannon may 
roar, the incense of our harmless saltpetre fill 
the air, and the children who are to inherit the 
fruit of these toiling, agonizing years, go about 
unblamed, making day and night vocal with 
their jubilant patriotism. 

The struggle in which we are engaged was 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


409 


inevitable ; it might have come a little sooner, 
or a little later, but it must have come. The 
disease of the nation was organic, and not func¬ 
tional, and the rough chirurgery of war was its 
only remedy. 

In opposition to this view, there are many 
languid thinkers who lapse into a forlorn belief 
that if this or that man had never lived, or if 
this or that other man had not ceased to live, 
the country might have gone on in peace and 
prosperity, until its felicity merged in the glories 
of the millennium. If Mr. Calhoun had never 
proclaimed his heresies; if Mr. Garrison had 
never published his paper ; if Mr. Phillips, the 
Cassandra in masculine shape of our long pros¬ 
perous Ilium, had never uttered his melodious 
prophecies ; if the silver tones of Mr. Clay had 
still sounded in the senate-chamber to smooth 
the billows of contention ; if the Olympian brow 
of Daniel Webster had been lifted from the dust 
to fix its awful frown on the darkening scowl of 
rebellion, — we might have been spared this 
dread season of convulsion. All this is but 
simple Martha’s faith, without the reason she 
18 


410 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


could have given : “ If Thou hadst been here, 
my brother had not died.” 

They little know the tidal movements of na¬ 
tional thought and feeling, who believe that they 
depend for existence on a few swimmers who 
ride their waves. It is not Leviathan that leads 
the ocean from continent to continent, but the 
ocean which bears his mighty bulk as it wafts 
its own bubbles. If this is true of all the nar¬ 
rower manifestations of human progress, how 
much more must it be true of those broad move¬ 
ments in the intellectual and spiritual domain 
which interest all mankind ? But in the more 
limited ranges referred to, no fact is more famil¬ 
iar than that there is a simultaneous impulse 
acting on many individual minds at once, so that 
genius comes in clusters, and shines rarely as a 
single star. You may trace a common motive 
and force in the pyramid-builders of the earliest 
recorded antiquity, in the evolution of Greek 
architecture, and in the sudden springing up of 
those wondrous cathedrals of the twelfth and 
following centuries, growing out of the soil with 
stem and bud and blossom, like flowers of stone 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


411 


whose seeds might well have been the flaming 
aerolites cast over the battlements of heaven. 
You may see the same law showing itself in the 
brief periods of glory which make the names of 
Pericles and Augustus illustrious with reflected 
splendors ; in the painters, the sculptors, the 
scholars of “ Leo’s golden days” ; in the authors 
of the Elizabethan time; in the poets of the 
first part of this century following that dreary 
period, suffering alike from the silence of Cow- 
per and the song of Hayley. You may accept 
the fact as natural, that Zwingli and Luther, 
without knowing each other, preached the same 
reformed gospel; that Newton, and Hooke, and 
Halley, and Wren arrived independently of each 
other at the great law of the diminution of grav¬ 
ity with the square of the distance ; that Lever- 
rier and Adams felt their hands meeting, as it 
were, as they stretched them into the outer 
darkness beyond the orbit of Uranus, in search 
of the dim, unseen planet; that Fulton and 
Bell, that Wheatstone and Morse, that Daguerre 
and Niepce, were moving almost simultaneous¬ 
ly in parallel paths to the same end. You see 


412 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


why Patrick Henry, in Richmond, and Samuel 
Adams, in Boston, were startling the crown offi¬ 
cials with the same accents of liberty, and why 
the Mecklenburg Resolutions had the very ring 
of the Protest of the Province of Massachusetts. 
This law of simultaneous intellectual movement, 
recognized by all thinkers, expatiated upon by 
Lord Macaulay and by Mr. Herbert Spencer 
among recent writers, is eminently applicable 
to that change of thought and feeling, which 
necessarily led to the present conflict. 

The antagonism of the two sections of the 
Union was not the work of this or that enthu¬ 
siast or fanatic. It was the consequence of a 
movement in mass of two different forms of civ¬ 
ilization in different directions, and the men to 
whom it was attributed were only those who 
represented it most completely, or who talked 
longest and loudest about it. Long before the 
accents of those famous statesmen referred to 
ever resounded in the halls of the Capitol, long 
before the “ Liberator ” opened its batteries, the 
controversy now working itself out by trial of 
battle, was foreseen and predicted. Washington 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


413 


warned his countrymen of the danger of sec¬ 
tional divisions, well knowing the line of cleav¬ 
age that ran through the seemingly solid fabric. 
Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall upon 
the land for its sins against a just God. An¬ 
drew Jackson announced a quarter of a century 
beforehand that the next pretext of revolution 
would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized 
with that penetrating insight which analyzed our 
institutions and conditions so keenly, that the 
Union was to be endangered by slavery, not 
through its interests, but through the change of 
character it was bringing about in the people 
of the two sections, the same fatal change which 
George Mason, more than half a century before, 
had declared to be the most pernicious effect 
of the system, adding the solemn warning, now 
fearfully justifying itself in the sight of his de¬ 
scendants, that “ by an inevitable chain of causes 
and effects, Providence punishes national sins by 
national calamities.” The Virginian romancer 
pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict which 
he saw approaching, as the prophets of Israel 
painted the coming woes of Jerusalem, and the 


414 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very 
year when the curtain should rise on the yet 
unopened drama. 

The wise men of the past, and the shrewd 
men of our own time, who warned us of the 
calamities in store for our nation, never doubted 
what was the cause which was to produce first 
alienation and finally rupture. The descendants 
of the men “ daily exercised in tyranny,” the 
“ petty tyrants,” as their own leading statesmen 
called them long ago, came at length to love the 
institution which their fathers had condemned 
while they tolerated. It is the fearful realiza¬ 
tion of that vision of the poet where the lost 
angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphur¬ 
ous emanations of the bottomless abyss, — so 
have their natures become changed by long 
breathing the atmosphere of the realm of dark¬ 
ness. 

At last, in the fulness of time, the fruits of sin 
ripened in a sudden harvest of crime. Vio¬ 
lence stalked into the senate-chamber, theft 
and perjury wound their way into the cabinet, 
and, finally, openly organized conspiracy, with 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


415 


force and arms, made burglarious entrance into 
a chief stronghold of the Union. That the 
principle which underlay these acts of fraud and 
violence should be irrevocably recorded with 
every needed sanction, it pleased God to select 
a chief ruler of the false government to be its 
Messiah to the listening world. As with Pharaoh, 
the Lord hardened his heart, while he opened 
his mouth, as of old he opened that of the un¬ 
wise animal ridden by cursing Balaam. Then 
spake Mr. “ Vice-President ” Stephens those 
memorable words which fixed forever the theory 
of the new social order. He first lifted a de¬ 
graded barbarism to the dignity of a philosophic 
system. He first proclaimed the gospel of eter¬ 
nal tyranny as the new revelation which Provi¬ 
dence had reserved for the western Palestine. 
Hear, O heavens ! and give ear, 0 earth ! The 
corner-stone of the new-born dispensation is 
the recognized inequality of races ; not that the 
strong may protect the weak, as men protect 
women and children, but that the strong may 
claim the authority of Nature and of God to 
buy, to sell, to scourge, to hunt, to cheat out of 


416 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


the reward of his labor, to keep in perpetual ig¬ 
norance, to blast with hereditary curses through¬ 
out all time, the bronzed foundling of the New 
World, upon whose darkness has dawned the 
star of the occidental Bethlehem ! 

After two years of war have consolidated 
the opinion of the Slave States, we read in the 
“Richmond Examiner”: “The establishment 
of the Confederacy is verily a distinct reaction 
against the whole course of the mistaken civiliza¬ 
tion of the age. For ‘ Liberty, Equality, Fra¬ 
ternity,’ we have deliberately substituted Slavery, 
Subordination, and Government.” 

A simple diagram, within the reach of all, 
shows how idle it is to look for any other cause 
than slavery as having any material agency in 
dividing the country. Match the two broken 
pieces of the Union, and you will find the fissure 
that separates them zigzagging itself half across 
the continent like an isothermal line, shooting its 
splintery projections, and opening its re-entering 
angles, not merely according to the limitations 
of particular States, but as a county or other 
limited section of ground belongs to freedom or 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


417 


to slavery. Add to this the official statement 
made in 1862, that “ there is not one regiment 
or battalion, or even company of men, which was 
organized in or derived from the Free States 
or Territories, anywhere, against the Union 
throw in gratuitously Mr. Stephens’s explicit 
declaration in the speech referred to, and we 
will consider the evidence closed for the present 
on this count of the indictment. 

In the face of these predictions, these declara¬ 
tions, this line of fracture, this precise statement, 
testimony from so many sources, extending 
through several generations, as to the necessary 
effect of slavery, a priori , and its actual influence 
as shown by the facts, few will suppose that 
anything we could have done would have stayed 
its course or prevented it from working out its 
legitimate effects on the white subjects of its 
corrupting dominion. Northern acquiescence 
or even sympathy may have sometimes helped 
to make it sit more easily on the consciences of 
its supporters. Many profess to think that 
Northern fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a 
mordant in fixing the black dye of slavery in 
18 * 


A A 


418 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


regions which would hut for that have washed 
themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. 
It is a delusion and a snare to trust in any such 
false and flimsy reasons where there is enough 
and more than enough in the institution itself 
to account for its growth. Slavery gratifies at 
once the love of power, the love of money, and 
the love of ease ; it finds a victim for anger who 
cannot smite back his oppressor; and it offers 
to all, without measure, the seductive privileges 
which the Mormon gospel reserves for the true 
believers on earth, and the Bible of Mahomet 
only dares promise to the saints in heaven. 

Still it is common, common even to vulgarism, 
to hear the remark that the same gallows-tree 
ought to bear as its fruit the arch-traitor and the 
leading champion of aggressive liberty. The 
mob of Jerusalem was not satisfied with its two 
crucified thieves ; it must have a cross also for 
the reforming Galilean, who interfered so rudely 
with its conservative traditions ! It is asserted 
that the fault was quite as much on our side as 
on the other ; that our agitators and abolisliers 
kindled the flame for which the combustibles 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


419 


were all ready on the other side of the border. 
If these men could have been silenced, our 
brothers had not died. 

Who are the persons that use this argument ? 
They are the very ones who are at the present 
moment most zealous in maintaining the right of 
free discussion. At a time when every power 
the nation can summon is needed to ward off 
the blows aimed at its life, and turn their force 
upon its foes, — when a false traitor at home 
may lose us a battle by a word, and a lying 
newspaper may demoralize an army by its daily 
or weekly stillicidium of poison, they insist with 
loud acclaim upon the liberty of speech and of 
the press; liberty, nay license, to deal with 
government, with leaders, with every measure, 
however urgent, in any terms they choose, to 
traduce the officer before his own soldiers, and 
assail the only men who have any claim at all to 
rule over the country, as the very ones who are 
least worthy to be obeyed. If these opposition 
members of society are to have their way now, 
they cannot find fault with those persons who 
spoke their minds freely in the past on that 


420 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


great question which, as we have agreed, under¬ 
lies all our present dissensions. 

It is easy to understand the bitterness which 
is often shown towards reformers. They are 
never general favorites. They are apt to inter¬ 
fere with vested rights and time-hallowed inter¬ 
ests. They often wear an unlovely, forbidding 
aspect. Their office corresponds to that of 
Nature’s sanitary commission for the removal 
of material nuisances. It is not the butterfly, 
but the beetle, which she employs for this duty. 
It is not the bird of paradise and the nightingale, 
but the fowl of dark plumage and unmelodious 
voice, to which is intrusted the sacred duty of 
eliminating the substances that infect the air. 
And the force of obvious analogy teaches us not 
to expect all the qualities which please the gen¬ 
eral taste in those whose instincts lead them to 
attack the moral nuisances which poison the 
atmosphere of society. But whether they please 
us in all their aspects or not, is not the question. 
Like them or not, they must and will perform 
their office, and we cannot stop them. They 
may be unwise, violent, abusive, extravagant, 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


421 


impracticable, but they are alive, at any rate, 
and it is their business to remove abuses as soon 
as they are dead, and often to help them to die. 
To quarrel with them because they are beetles, 
and not butterflies, is natural, but far from 
profitable. They grow none the worse for being 
trodden upon, like those tough weeds that love 
to nestle between the stones of court-yard pave¬ 
ments. If you strike at one of their heads with 
the bludgeon of the law, or of violence, it flies 
open like the seed-capsule of a snap-weed, and 
fills the whole region with seminal thoughts 
which will spring up in a crop just like the 
original martyr. They chased one of these en¬ 
thusiasts, who attacked slavery, from St. Louis, 
and shot him at Alton in 1837 ; and on the 23d 
of June just passed, the Governor of Missouri, 
Chairman of the Committee on Emancipation, 
introduced to the Convention an Ordinance for 
the final extinction of slavery ! They hunted 
another through the streets of a great Northern 
city in 1835 ; and within a few weeks a regiment 
of colored soldiers, many of them bearing the 
marks of the slave-driver’s whip on their backs, 


422 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


marched out before a vast multitude tremulous 
with newly-stirred sympathies, through the 
streets of the same city, to fight our battles in 
the name of God and Liberty ! 

The same persons who abuse the reformers, 
and lay all our troubles at their door, are apt to 
be severe also on what they contemptuously 
emphasize as “ sentiments” considered as mo¬ 
tives of action. It is charitable to believe that 
they do not seriously contemplate or truly un¬ 
derstand the meaning of the words they use, 
but rather play w r ith them, as certain so-called 
“ learned ” quadrupeds play with the printed 
characters set before them. In all questions 
involving duty, we act from sentiments. Re¬ 
ligion springs from them, the family order rests 
upon them, and in every community each act 
involving a relation between any two of its 
members implies the recognition or the denial 
of a sentiment. It is true that men often forget 
them or act against their bidding in the keen 
competition of business and politics. But God 
has not left the hard intellect of man to work 
out its devices without the constant presence of 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


423 


beings with gentler and purer instincts. The 
breast of woman is the ever-rocking cradle of 
the pure and holy sentiments which will sooner 
or later steal their way into the mind of her 
sterner companion ; which will by and by emerge 
in the thoughts of the world’s teachers, and 
at last thunder forth in the edicts of its law¬ 
givers and masters. Woman herself borrows 
half her tenderness from the sweet influences of 
maternity; and childhood, that weeps at the 
story of suffering, that shudders at the picture 
of wrong, brings down its inspiration “ from 
God, who is our home.” To quarrel, then, 
with the class of minds that instinctively attack 
abuses, is not only profitless but senseless ; to 
sneer at the sentiments which are the springs 
of all just and virtuous actions, is merely a dis¬ 
play of unthinking levity, or of want of the 
natural sensibilities. 

With the hereditary character of the Southern 
people moving in one direction, and the awak¬ 
ened conscience of the North stirring in the 
other, the open conflict of opinion was inevitable, 
and equally inevitable its appearance in the field 


424 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


of national politics. For what is meant by 
self-government is, that a man shall make his 
convictions of what is right and expedient regu¬ 
late the community so far as his fractional share 
of the government extends. If one has come to 
the conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any 
particular institution or statute is a violation of 
the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected 
that he will choose to be represented by those 
who share his belief, and who will in their wider 
sphere do all they legitimately can to get rid of 
the wrong in which they find themselves and 
their constituents involved. To prevent opinion 
from organizing itself under political forms may 
be very desirable, but it is not according to the 
theory or practice of self-government. And if 
at last organized opinions become arrayed in 
hostile shape against each other, we shall find 
that a just war is only the last inevitable link in 
a chain of closely connected impulses of which 
the original source is in Him who gave to tender 
and humble and uncorrupted souls the sense of 
right and wrong, which, after passing through 
various forms, has found its final expression in 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


425 


the use of material force. Behind the bayonet 
is the lawgiver’s statute, behind the statute the 
thinker’s argument, behind the argument is the 
tender conscientiousness of woman, — woman, 
the wife, the mother, — who looks upon the face 
of God himself reflected in the unsullied soul of 
infancy. u Out of the mouths of babes and 
sucklings hast thou ordained strength, because of 
thine enemies.” 

The simplest course for the malecontent is to 
find fault with the order of Nature and the 
Being who established it. Unless the law of 
moral progress were changed, or the Governor 
of the Universe were dethroned, it would be 
impossible to prevent a great uprising of the 
human conscience against a system, the legisla¬ 
tion relating to which, in the words of so calm 
an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu 
of our laws, presents “ such unparalleled atroci¬ 
ties as to show that the laws of humanity have 
been totally perverted.” Until the infinite self¬ 
ishness of the powers that hate and fear the 
principles of free government swallowed up their 
convenient virtues, that system was hissed at by 


426 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


all the old-world civilization. While in one 
section of our land the attempt has been going 
on to lift it out of the category of tolerated 
wrongs into the sphere of the world’s beneficent 
agencies, it was to be expected that the protest 
of Northern manhood and womanhood would 
grow louder and stronger until the conflict of 
principles led to the conflict of forces. The 
moral uprising of the North came with the logical 
precision of destiny; the rage of the “ petty 
tyrants ” was inevitable; the plot to erect a 
slave empire followed with fated certainty ; and 
the only question left for us of the North was, 
whether we should suffer the cause of the Nation 
tc go by default, or maintain its existence by the 
a.gument of cannon and musket, of bayonet and 
sabre. 

The war in which we are engaged is for 
no meanly ambitious or unworthy purpose. It 
was primarily, and is to this moment, for the 
preservation of our national existence. The 
first direct movement towards it was a civil 
request on the part of certain Southern persons, 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


427 


that the Nation would commit suicide, without 
making any unnecessary trouble about it. It 
was answered, with sentiments of the highest 
consideration, that there were constitutional and 
other objections to the Nation’s laying violent 
hands upon itself. It was then requested, in 
a somewhat peremptory tone, that the Nation 
would be so obliging as to abstain from food 
until the natural consequences of that proceed¬ 
ing should manifest themselves. All this was 
done as between a single State and an isolated 
fortress; but it was not South Carolina and 
Fort Sumter that were talking; it was a vast 
conspiracy uttering its menace to a mighty na¬ 
tion ; the whole menagerie of treason was pacing 
its cages, ready to spring as soon as the doors 
were opened ; and all that the tigers of rebellion 
wanted to kindle their wild natures to frenzy, 
was the sight of flowing blood. 

As if to show how coldly and calmly all this 
had been calculated beforehand by the conspir¬ 
ators, to make sure that no absence of malice 
aforethought should degrade the grand malignity 
of settled purpose into the trivial effervescence 


428 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


of transient passion, the torch which was liter¬ 
ally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to 
“ fire the southern heart ” and light the flame 
of civil war, was given into the trembling hand 
of an old white-headed man, the wretched in¬ 
cendiary whom history will handcuff in eternal 
infamy with the temple-burner of ancient Ephe¬ 
sus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at 
Fort Sumter, smote every loyal American full 
in the face. As when the foul witch used to 
torture her miniature image, the person it repre¬ 
sented suffered all that she inflicted on his waxen 
counterpart, so every buffet that fell on the 
smoking fortress was felt by the sovereign nation 
of which that was the representative. Robbery 
could go no farther, for every loyal man of the 
North was despoiled in that single act as much 
as if a footpad had laid hands upon him to take 
from him his father’s staff and his mother’s 
Bible. Insult could go no farther, for over 
those battered walls waved the precious symbol 
of all we most value in the past and most hope 
for in the future, — the banner under which we 
became a nation, and which, next to the cross of 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


429 


the Redeemer, is the dearest object of love and 
honor to all who toil or march or sail beneath 
its waving folds of glory. 

Let us pause for a moment to consider what 
might have been the course of events if under 
the influence of fear, or of what some would 
name humanity, or of conscientious scruples to 
enter upon what a few please themselves and 
their rebel friends by calling a “ wicked war ” ; 
if under any or all these influences we had taken 
the insult and the violence of South Carolina 
without accepting it as the first blow of a mortal 
combat, in which we must either die or give the 
last and finishing stroke. 

By the same title which South Carolina as¬ 
serted to Fort Sumter, Florida would have chal¬ 
lenged as her own the Gibraltar of the Gulf, 
and Virginia the Ehrenbreitstein of the Ches¬ 
apeake. Half our navy would have anchored 
under the guns of these suddenly alienated for¬ 
tresses, with the flag of the rebellion flying at 
their peaks. “Old Ironsides” herself would 
have perhaps sailed out of Annapolis harbor to 
have a wooden Jefferson Davis shaped for her 


430 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


figure-head at Norfolk, — for Andrew Jackson 
was a hater of secession, and his was no fitting 
effigy for the battle-ship of the red-handed con¬ 
spiracy. With all the great fortresses, with 
half the ships and warlike material, in addition 
to all that was already stolen, in the traitors’ 
hands, what chance would the loyal men in the 
Border States have stood against the rush of the 
desperate fanatics of the now triumphant fac¬ 
tion ? Where would Maryland, Kentucky, Mis¬ 
souri, Tennessee, — saved, or looking to be 
saved, even as it is, as by fire, — have been in 
the day of trial ? Into whose hands would the 
Capital, the archives, the glory, the name, the 
very life of the nation as a nation, have fallen, 
endangered as all of them were, in spite of the 
volcanic outburst of the startled North which 
answered the roar of the first gun at Sumter ? 
Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that 
in the very bosom of the North itself there was 
a serpent, coiled but not sleeping, which only 
listened for the first word that made it safe to 
strike, to bury its fangs in the heart of Freedom, 
and blend its golden scales in close embrace 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


431 


with the deadly reptile of the cotton-fields. 
Who would not wish that he were wrong in 
such a suspicion ? yet who can forget the mys¬ 
terious warnings that the allies of the rebels 
were to he found far north of the fatal boundary¬ 
line ; and that it was in their own streets, 
against their own brothers, that the champions 
of liberty were to defend her sacred heritage? 

Not to have fought, then, after the supreme 
indignity and outrage we had suffered, would 
have been to provoke every further wrong, and 
to furnish the means for its commission. It 
would have been to placard ourselves on the 
walls of the shattered fort, as the spiritless race 
the proud labor-thieves called us. It would 
have been to die as a nation of freemen, and to 
have given all we had left of our rights into the 
hands of alien tyrants in league with home-bred 
traitors. 

Not to have fought would have been to be 
false to liberty everywhere, and to humanity. 
You have only to see who are our friends and 
who are our enemies in this struggle, to decide 
for what principles we are combating. We 


432 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


know too well that the British aristocracy is 
not with us. We know what the West End of 
London wishes may be result of this controversy. 
The two halves of this Union are the two blades 
of the shears, threatening as those of Atropos 
herself, which will sooner or later cut into shreds 
the old charters of tyranny. How they would 
exult if they could but break the rivet that 
makes of the two blades one resistless weapon ! 
The man who of all living Americans had the 
best opportunity of knowing how the fact stood, 
wrote these words in March, 1862: “ That 
Great Britain did, in the most terrible moment 
of our domestic trial in struggling with a mon¬ 
strous social evil she had earnestly professed to 
abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability 
to master it, and then become the only foreign 
nation steadily contributing in every indirect 
way possible to verify its pre-judgment, will 
probably be the verdict made up against her 
by posterity, on a calm comparison of the evi¬ 
dence.” 

So speaks the wise, tranquil statesman who 
represents the nation at the Court of St. James, 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


433 


in the midst of embarrassments perhaps not less 
than those which vexed his illustrious grand¬ 
father, when he occupied the same position as 
the Envoy of the hated, new-born Republic. 

“ It cannot be denied,” — says another ob¬ 
server, placed on one of our national watch- 
towers in a foreign capital, — “it cannot be 
denied that the tendency of European public 
opinion, as delivered from high places, is more 
and more unfriendly to our cause ” ; — “ but the 
people,” he adds, “everywhere sympathize with 
us, for they know that our cause is that of free 
institutions, — that our struggle is that of the 
people against an oligarchy.” These are the 
words of the Minister to Austria, whose gener¬ 
ous sympathies with popular liberty no homage 
paid to his genius by the class whose admiring 
welcome is most seductive to scholars has ever 
spoiled ; our fellow-citizen, the historian of a 
great Republic which infused a portion of its life 
into our own, — John Lothrop Motley. 

It is a bitter commentary on the effects of 
European, and especially of British institutions, 
that such men should have to speak in such 


19 


434 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


terms of the manner in which our struggle has 
been regarded. We had, no doubt, very gen¬ 
erally reckoned on the sympathy of England, at 
least, in a strife which, whatever pretexts were 
alleged as its cause, arrayed upon one side the 
supporters of an institution she was supposed to 
hate in earnest, and on the other its assailants. 
We had forgotten what her own poet, one of the 
truest and purest of her children, had said of his 
countrymen, in words which might well have 
been spoken by the British Premier to the 
American Ambassador asking for some evidence 
of kind feeling on the part of his Government: 

“ Alas! expect it not. We found no bait 
To tempt \is in thy country. Doing good, 
Disinterested good, is not our trade.” 

We know full well by this time what truth 
there is in these honest lines. We have found 
out, too, who our European enemies are, and 
why they are our enemies. Three bending 
statues bear up that gilded seat, which, in spite 
of the time-hallowed usurpations and consecrated 
wrongs so long associated with its history, is still 
venerated as the throne. One of these supports 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


435 


is the pensioned church ; the second is the pur¬ 
chased army; the third is the long-suffering 
people. Whenever the third caryatid comes to 
life and walks from beneath its burden, the cap¬ 
itals of Europe will he filled with the broken 
furniture of palaces. No wonder that our min¬ 
isters find the privileged orders willing to see 
the ominous republic split into two antagonistic 
forces, each paralyzing the other, and standing 
in their mighty impotence a spectacle to courts 
and kings; to be pointed at as helots who 
drank themselves blind and giddy out of that 
broken chalice which held the poisonous draught 
of liberty ! 

We know our enemies, and they are the ene¬ 
mies of popular rights. We know our friends, 
and they are the foremost champions of political 
and social progress. The eloquent voice and the 
busy pen of John Bright have both been ours, 
heartily, nobly, from the first; the man of the 
people has been true to the cause of the people. 
That deep and generous thinker, who, more than 
any of her philosophical writers, represents the 
higher thought of England, John Stuart Mill, 


436 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


has spoken for us in tones to which none but 
her sordid hucksters and her selfish land-graspers 
can refuse to listen. Count Gasparin and La- 
boulaye have sent us back the echo from liberal 
France; France, the country of ideas, whose 
earlier inspirations embodied themselves for us 
in the person of the youthful Lafayette. Italy, 
— would you know on which side the rights of 
the people and the hopes of the future are to be 
found in this momentous conflict, what surer 
test, what ampler demonstration can you ask 
than the eager sympathy of the Italian patriot 
whose name is the hope of the toiling many, 
and the dread of their oppressors, wherever it is 
spoken, the heroic Garibaldi? 

But even when it is granted that the war was 
inevitable ; when it is granted that it is for no 
base end, but first for the life of the nation, and 
more and more, as the quarrel deepens, for the 
welfare of mankind, for knowledge as against en- 
forced ignorance, for justice as against oppression, 
for that kingdom of God on earth which neither 
the unrighteous man nor the extortioner can 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


437 


nope to inherit, it may still be that the strife is 
hopeless, and must therefore be abandoned. Is 
it too much to say that whether the war is hope¬ 
less or not for the North depends chiefly on 
the answer to the question, whether the North 
has virtue and manhood enough to persevere in 
the contest so long as its resources hold out ? 
But how much virtue and manhood it has can 
never be told until they are tried, and those 
who are first to doubt the prevailing existence 
of these qualities are not commonly themselves 
patterns of either. We have a right to trust 
that this people is virtuous and brave enough 
not to give up a just and necessary contest be¬ 
fore its end is attained, or shown to be unattain¬ 
able for want of material agencies. What was 
the end to be attained by accepting the gage of 
battle ? It was to get the better of our assail¬ 
ants, and, having done so, to take exactly those 
steps which we should then consider necessary 
to our present and future safety. The more 
obstinate the resistance, the more completely 
must it be subdued. It may not even have 
been desirable, as Mr. Mill suggested long since, 


438 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


that the victory over the rebellion should have 
been easily and speedily won, and so have failed 
to develop the true meaning of the conflict, to 
bring: out the full strength of the revolted sec- 
tion, and to exhaust the means which would 
have served it for a still more desperate future 
effort. We cannot complain that our task has 
proved too easy. We give our Southern army, 
— for we must remember that it is our army, 
after all, only in a state of mutiny, — we give 
our Southern army credit for excellent spirit and 
perseverance in the face of many disadvantages. 
But we have a few plain facts which show the 
probable course of events ; the gradual but sure 
operation of the blockade ; the steady pushing 
back of the boundary of rebellion, in spite of 
resistance at many points, or even of such aggres¬ 
sive inroads as that which our armies are now 
meeting with their long lines of bayonets, — 
may God grant them victory! — the progress 
of our arms down the Mississippi; the relative 
value of gold and currency at Richmond and 
Washington. If the index-hands of force and 
credit continue to move in the ratio of the past 


TIIE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


439 


two years, where will the Confederacy be in 
twice or thrice that time ? 

Either all our statements of the relative num¬ 
bers, power, and wealth of the two sections of 
the country signify nothing, or the resources of 
our opponents in men and means must be much 
nearer exhaustion than our own. The running 
sand of the hour-glass gives no warning, but 
runs as freely as ever when its last grains are 
about to fall. The merchant wears as bold a 
face the day before he is proclaimed a bankrupt, 
as he wore at the height of his fortunes. If 
Colonel Grierson found the Confederacy “ a 
mere shell,” so far as his equestrian excursion 
carried him, how can we say how soon the shell 
will collapse ? It seems impossible that our own 
dissensions can produce anything more than 
local disturbances, like the Morristown revolt, 
which Washington put down at once by the aid 
of his faithful Massachusetts soldiers. But in a 
rebellious state dissension is ruin, and the vio¬ 
lence of an explosion in a strict ratio to the 
pressure on every inch of the containing surface. 
Now we know the tremendous force which has 


440 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


compelled the “ unanimity ” of the Southern 
people. There are men in the ranks of the 
Southern army, if we can trust the evidence 
which reaches us, who have been recruited with 
packs of blood-hounds, and drilled, as it were, 
with halters around their necks. We know what 
is the bitterness of those who have escaped this 
bloody harvest of the remorseless conspirators ; 
and from that we can judge of the elements of 
destruction incorporated with many of the seem¬ 
ingly solid portions of the fabric of the rebellion. 
The facts are necessarily few, but we can reason 
from the laws of human nature as to what must 
be the feelings of the people of the South to their 
Northern neighbors. It is impossible that the 
love of the life which they have had in common, 
their glorious recollections, their blended histo¬ 
ries, their sympathies as Americans, their mingled 
blood, their birthright as born under the same 
flag and protected by it the world over, their 
worship of the same God, under the same out¬ 
ward form, at least, and in the folds of the same 
ecclesiastical organizations, should all be forgot¬ 
ten, and leave nothing but hatred and eternal 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. Ux 

alienation. Men do not change in this way, and 
we may be quite sure that the pretended una¬ 
nimity of the South will some day or other 
prove to have been a part of the machinery 
of deception which the plotters have managed 
with such consummate skill. It is hardly to be 
doubted that in every part of the South, as in 
New Orleans, in Charleston, in Richmond, there 
are multitudes who wait for the day of deliver¬ 
ance, and for whom the coming of “ our good 
friends, the enemies,” as Beranger has it, will be 
like the advent of the angels to the prison-cells 
of Paul and Silas. But there is no need of 
depending on the aid of our white Southern 
friends, be they many or be they few ; there is 
material power enough in the North, if there be 
the will to use it, to overrun and by degrees to 
recolonize the South, and it is far from impossi¬ 
ble that some such process may be a part of the 
mechanism of its new birth, spreading from va¬ 
rious centres of organization, on the plan which 
Nature follows when she would fill a half-fin¬ 
ished tissue with bloodvessels, or change a 
temporary cartilage into bone. 

19 * 


442 


THE INEVITjLBLE TRIAL. 


Suppose, however, that the prospects of the 
war were, we need not say absolutely hopeless, 
— because that is the unfounded hypothesis of 
those whose wish is father to their thought, — 
but full of discouragement. Can we make a 
safe and honorable peace as the quarrel now 
stands ? As honor comes before safety, let us 
look at that first. We have undertaken to 
resent a supreme insult, and have had to bear 
new insults and aggressions, even to the direct 
menace of our national capital. The blood 
which our best and bravest have shed will never 
sink into the ground until our wrongs are 
righted, or the power to right them is shown to 
be insufficient. If we stop now, all the loss of 
life has been butchery; if we carry out the in¬ 
tention with which we first resented the outrage, 
the earth drinks up the blood of our martyrs, 
and the rose of honor blooms forever where it 
was shed. To accept less than indemnity for 
the past, so far as the wretched kingdom of the 
conspirators can afford it, and security for the 
future, would discredit us in our own eyes and 
in the eyes of those who hate and long to be 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


443 


able to despise us. But to reward the insults 
and the robberies we have suffered, by the sur¬ 
render of our fortresses along the coast, in the 
national gulf, and on the banks of the national 
river, — and this and much more would surely 
be demanded of us, — would place the United 
Fraction of America on a level with the Peru¬ 
vian guano-islands, whose ignoble but coveted 
soil is open to be plundered by all comers! 

If we could make a peace without dishonor, 
could we make one that would be safe and last¬ 
ing ? We could have an armistice, no doubt, 
long enough for the flesh of our wounded men 
to heal and their broken bones to knit together. 
But could we expect a solid, substantial, endur- 
ing peace, in which the grass would have time 
to grow in the war-paths, and the bruised arms 
to rust, as the old G. R. cannon rusted in our 
State arsenal, sleeping with their tompions in 
their mouths, like so many sucking lambs ? It is 
not the question whether the same set of soldiers 
would be again summoned to the field. Let us 
take it for granted that we have seen enough of 
the miseries of warfare to last us for a while, 


444 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


and keep us contented with militia musters and 
sham-fights. The question is whether we could 
leave our children and our children’s children 
with any secure trust that they would not have 
to go through the very trials we are enduring, 
probably on a more extended scale and in a 
more aggravated form. 

It may be well to look at the prospects before 
us, if a peace is established on the basis of 
Southern independence, the only peace possible, 
unless we choose to add ourselves to the four 
millions who already call the Southern whites 
their masters. We know what the prevailing 
— we do not mean universal — spirit and tem¬ 
per of those people have been for generations, 
and what they are like to be after a long and 
bitter warfare. We know what their tone is to 
the people of the North ; if we do not, De Bow 
and Governor Hammond are schoolmasters who 
will teach us to our heart’s content. We see 
how easily their social organization adapts itself 
to a state of warfare. They breed a superior 
order of men for leaders, an ignorant common¬ 
alty ready to follow them as the vassals of feudal 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


445 


times followed their lords ; and a race of bonds¬ 
men, who, unless this war changes them from 
chattels to human beings, will continue to add 
vastly to their military strength in raising their 
food, in building their fortifications, in all the 
mechanical work of war, in fact, except, it may 
be, the handling of weapons. The institution 
proclaimed as the corner-stone of their govern¬ 
ment, does violence not merely to the precepts 
of religion, but to many of the best human in¬ 
stincts, yet their fanaticism for it is as sincere as 
any tribe of the desert ever manifested for the 
faith of the Prophet of Allah. They call them¬ 
selves by the same name as the Christians of the 
North, yet there is as much difference between 
their Christianity and that of Wesley or of 
Channing, as between creeds that in past times 
have vowed mutual extermination. Still we 
must not call them barbarians because they 
cherish an institution hostile to civilization. 
Their highest culture stands out all the more 
brilliantly from the dark background of igno¬ 
rance against which it is seen ; but it would be 
injustice to deny that they have always shone in 


446 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


political science, or that their military capacity 
makes them most formidable antagonists, and 
that, however inferior they may be to their 
Northern fellow-countrymen in most branches 
of literature and science, the social elegances and 
personal graces lend their outward show to the 
best circles among their dominant class. 

Whom have we then for our neighbors, in 
case of separation, — our neighbors along a 
splintered line of fracture extending for thou¬ 
sands of miles, — but the Saracens of the Nine¬ 
teenth Century; a fierce, intolerant, fanatical 
people, the males of which will be a perpetual 
standing army ; hating us worse than the 
Southern Hamilcar taught his swarthy boy to 
hate the Romans ; a people whose existence as 
a hostile nation on our frontier, is incompatible 
with our peaceful development ? Their wealth, 
the proceeds of enforced labor, multiplied by the 
breaking up of new cotton-fields, and in due 
time by the reopening of the slave-trade, will 
go to purchase arms, to construct fortresses, to 
fit out navies. The old Saracens, fanatics for a 
religion which professed to grow by conquest, 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


447 


were a nation of predatory and migrating war¬ 
riors. The Southern people, fanatics for a sys¬ 
tem essentially aggressive, conquering, wasting, 
which cannot remain stationary, hut must grow 
by alternate appropriations of labor and of land, 
will come to resemble their earlier prototypes. 
Already, even, the insolence of their language 
to the people of the North is a close imitation 
of the style which those proud and arrogant 
Asiatics affected toward all the nations of Eu¬ 
rope. What the “ Christian dogs ” were to the 
followers of Mahomet, the “ accursed Yankees,” 
the ‘‘Northern mudsills” are to the followers of 
the Southern Moloch. The accomplishments 
which we find in their choicer circles, were pre¬ 
figured in the court of the chivalric Saladin, and 
the long train of Painim knights who rode forth 
to conquest under the Crescent. In all branches 
of culture, their heathen predecessors went far 
beyond them. The schools of mediaeval learn¬ 
ing* were filled with Arabian teachers. The 
heavens declare the glory of the Oriental astron¬ 
omers, as Algorab and Aldebaran repeat their 
Arabic names to the students of the starry 


448 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


firmament. The sumptuous edifice erected by 
the Art of the nineteenth century, to hold the 
treasures of its Industry, could show nothing 
fairer than the court which copies the Moorish 
palace that crowns the summit of Granada. 
Yet this was the power which Charles the 
Hammer, striking for Christianity and civiliza¬ 
tion, had to break like a potter’s vessel; these 
were the people whom Spain had to utterly 
extirpate from the land where they had ruled 
for centuries ! 

Prepare, then, if you unseal the vase which 
holds this dangerous Afrit of Southern nation¬ 
ality, for a power on your borders that will be to 
you what the Saracens were to Europe before 
the son of Pepin shattered their armies, and 
flung the shards and shivers of their broken 
strength upon the refuse heap of extinguished 
barbarisms. Prepare for the possible fate of 
Christian Spain ; for a slave-market in Philadel¬ 
phia ; for the Alhambra of a Southern caliph 
on the grounds consecrated by the domestic vir¬ 
tues of a long line of Presidents and their exem¬ 
plary families. Remember the ages of border 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


449 


warfare between England and Scotland, closed 
at last by the union of the two kingdoms. Rec¬ 
ollect the hunting of the deer on the Cheviot 
hills, and all that it led to ; then think of the 
game which the dogs will follow open-mouthed 
across our Southern border, and all that is like 
to follow which the child may rue that is un¬ 
born ; think of these possibilities, or probabilities, 
if you will, and say whether you are ready to 
make a peace which will give you such a neigh¬ 
bor ; which may betray your civilization as that 
of half the Peninsula was given up to the 
Moors ; which may leave your fair border prov¬ 
inces to be crushed under the heel of a tyrant, 
as Holland was left to be trodden down by the 
Duke of Alva! 

No! no! fellow-citizens! We must fight in 
this quarrel until one side or the other is ex¬ 
hausted. Rather than suffer all that we have 
poured out of our blood, all that we have lav¬ 
ished of our substance, to have been expended in 
vain, and to bequeath an unsettled question, an 
unfinished conflict, an unavenged insult, an un¬ 
righted wrong, a stained escutcheon, a tarnished 


450 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


shield, a dishonored flag, an unheroic memory 
to the descendants of those who have always 
claimed that their fathers were heroes rather 
than do all this, it were hardly an American 
exaggeration to say, better that the last man and 
the last dollar should be followed by the last 
woman and the last dime, the last child and the 
last copper! 

There are those who profess to fear that our 
Government is becoming a mere irresponsible 
tyranny. If there are any who really believe 
that our present Chief Magistrate means to 
found a dynasty for himself and family, — that a 
coup d'etat is in preparation by which he is to 
become Abraham, Dei Gratia Rex, — they 
cannot have duly pondered his letter of June 
12tli, in which he unbosoms himself with the 
simplicity of a rustic lover called upon by an 
anxious parent to explain his intentions. The 
force of his argument is not at all injured by the 
homeliness of his illustrations. The American 
people are not much afraid that their liberties 
will be usurped. An army of legislators is not 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


451 


very likely to throw away its political privileges, 
and the idea of a despotism resting on an open 
ballot-box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument 
built on the waves of Boston Harbor. We 
know pretty nearly how much of sincerity there 
is in the fears so clamorously expressed, and 
how far they are found in company with uncom¬ 
promising hostility to the armed enemies of the 
nation. We have learned to put a true value 
on the services of the watch-dog who bays the 
moon, but does not bite the thief! 

The men who are so busy holy-stoning the 
quarter-deck, while all hands are wanted to keep 
the ship afloat, can no doubt show spots upon it 
that would be very unsightly in fair weather. 
Ho thoroughly loyal man, however, need suffer 
from any arbitrary exercise of power, such as 
emergencies always give rise to. If any half- 
loval man forgets his code of half-decencies and 
half-duties so far as to become obnoxious to the 
peremptory justice which takes the place of 
slower forms in all centres of conflagration, 
there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers 
who are risking their lives for us ; perhaps there 


452 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


is even more satisfaction than when an avowed 
traitor is caught and punished. For of all men 
who are loathed by generous natures, such as 
fill the ranks of the armies of the Union, none 
are so thoroughly loathed as the men who con¬ 
trive to keep just within the limits of the law, 
while their whole conduct provokes others to 
break it; whose patriotism consists in stopping 
an inch short of treason, and whose political 
morality has for its safeguard a just respect for 
the jailer and the hangman ! The simple pre¬ 
ventive against all possible injustice a citizen is 
like to suffer at the hands of a government 
which in its need and haste must of course com¬ 
mit many errors, is to take care to do nothing 
that will directly or indirectly help the enemy, 
or hinder the government in carrying on the 
war. When the clamor against usurpation and 
tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this 
negative merit, it may be listened to. When it 
comes from those who have done what they 
could to serve their country, it will receive the 
attention it deserves. Doubtless, there may 
prove to be wrongs which demand righting, but 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


453 


the pretence of any plan for changing the essen¬ 
tial principle of our self-governing system is a 
figment which its contrivers laugh over among 
themselves. Do the citizens of Harrisburg or 
of Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict 
legality of an executive act meant in good faith 
for their protection against the invader ? We 
are all citizens of Harrisburg, all citizens of 
Philadelphia, in this hour of their peril, and 
with the enemy at work in our own harbors, we 
begin to understand the difference between a 
good and bad citizen ; the man that helps and 
the man that hinders ; the man who, while the 
pirate is in sight, complains that our anchor 
is dragging in his mud, and the man who vio¬ 
lates the proprieties, like our brave Portland 
brothers, when they jumped on board the first 
steamer they could reach, cut her cable, and 
bore down on the corsair, with a habeas corpus 
act that lodged twenty buccaneers in Fort Preble 
before sunset! 

We cannot, then, we cannot be circling in¬ 
ward to be swallowed up in the whirlpool of 


454 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


national destruction. If our borders are in¬ 
vaded, it is only as the spur that is driven into 
the courser’s flank to rouse his slumbering met¬ 
tle. If our property is taxed, it is only to teach 
us that liberty is worth paying for as well as 
fighting for. We are pouring out the most gen¬ 
erous blood of our youth and manhood ; alas ! 
this is always the price that must be paid for 
the redemption of a people. What have we to 
complain of, whose granaries are choking with 
plenty, whose streets are gay with shining robes 
and glittering equipages, whose industry is abun¬ 
dant enough to reap all its overflowing harvest, 
yet sure of employment and of its just reward, 
the soil of whose mighty valleys is an inexhaus¬ 
tible mine of fertility, whose mountains cover 
up such stores of heat and power, imprisoned in 
their coal measures, as would warm all the in¬ 
habitants and work all the machinery of our 
planet for unnumbered ages, whose rocks pour 
out rivers of oil, whose streams run yellow 
over beds of golden sand, — what have we to 
complain of? 

Have we degenerated from our English fathers, 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


455 


so that we cannot do and bear for our national 
salvation what they have done and borne over 
and over again for their form of government? 
Could England, in her wars with Napoleon, bear 
an income-tax of ten per cent, and must we faint 
under the burden of an income-tax of three per 
cent. ? Was she content to negotiate a loan at 
fifty-three for the hundred, and that paid in de¬ 
preciated paper, and can we talk about financial 
ruin with our national stocks ranging from 
one to eight or nine above par, and the “ five- 
twenty” war loan eagerly taken by our own 
people to the amount of nearly two hundred 
millions, without any check to the flow of the 
current pressing inwards against the doors of 
the Treasury ? Except in those portions of the 
country which are the immediate seat of war, 
or liable to be made so, and which, having the 
greatest interest not to become the border states 
of hostile nations, can best afford to suffer now, 
the state of prosperity and comfort is such as to 
astonish those who visit us from other countries. 
What are war taxes to a nation which, as we 
are assured on good authority, has more men 


456 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


worth a million now than it had worth ten 
thousand dollars at the close of the Revolution, 
— whose whole property is a hundred times, 
and whose commerce, inland and foreign, is five 
hundred times, what it was then ? But we need 
not study Mr. Stilly’s pamphlet and “ Thomp¬ 
son’s Bank-Note Reporter,” to show us what 
we know well enough, — that, so far from hav¬ 
ing occasion to tremble in fear of our impending 
ruin, we must rather blush for our material 
prosperity. For the multitudes who are unfor¬ 
tunate enough to be taxed for a million or more, 
of course we must feel deeply, at the same time 
suggesting that the more largely they report 
their incomes to the tax-gatherer, the more con¬ 
solation they will find in the feeling that they 
have served their country. But — let us say it 
plainly — it will not hurt our people to be 
taught that there are other things to be cared 
for besides money-making and money-spending ; 
that the time has come when manhood must 
assert itself by brave deeds and noble thoughts ; 
when womanhood must assume its most sacred 
office, “ to warn, to comfort,” and, if need be, 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


457 


“ to command,” those whose services their coun¬ 
try calls for. This Northern section of the land 
has become a great variety shop, of which the 
Atlantic cities are the long-extended counter. 
We have grown rich for what? To put gilt 
bands on coachmen’s hats ? To sweep the foul 
sidewalks with the heaviest silks which the toil¬ 
ing artisans of France can send us ? To look 
through plate-glass windows, and pity the brown 
soldiers, — or sneer at the black ones ? to re¬ 
duce the speed of trotting horses a second or 
two below its old minimum ? to color meer¬ 
schaums ? to flaunt in laces, and sparkle in 
diamonds ? to dredge our maidens’ hair with 
gold-dust ? to float through life, the passive 
shuttlecocks of fashion, from the avenues to the 
beaches, and back again from the beaches to 
the avenues? Was it for this that the broad 
domain of the Western hemisphere was kept so 
long unvisited by civilization ? — for this, that 
Time, the father of empires, unbound the virgin 
zone of this youngest of his daughters, and gave 
her, beautiful in the long veil of her forests, to 
the rude embrace of the adventurous Colonist ? 


20 


458 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


All this is what we see around us, now, — now, 
while we are actually fighting this great battle, 
and supporting this great load of indebtedness. 
Wait till the diamonds go back to the Jews of 
Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears 
the fatal announcement, For Sale or to Let; till 
the voice of our Miriam is obeyed, as she sings, 

Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms! ” 
till the gold-dust is combed from the golden 
locks, and hoarded to buy bread ; till the fast¬ 
driving youth smokes his clay-pipe on the plat¬ 
form of the horse-car ; till the music-grinders 
cease because none will pay them ; till there are 
no peaches in the windows at twenty-four dol¬ 
lars a dozen, and no heaps of bananas and pine¬ 
apples selling at the street-corners; till the 
ten-flounced dress has but three flounces, and it 
is felony to drink champagne ; — wait till these 
changes show themselves, the signs of deeper 
wants, the preludes of exhaustion and bank¬ 
ruptcy ; then let us talk of the Maelstrom ; — 
but till then, let us not be cowards with our 
purses, while brave men are emptying their 
hearts upon the earth for us ; let us not whine 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


459 


over our imaginary ruin, while the reversed 
current of circling events is carrying us farther 
and farther, every hour, out of the influence 
of the great failing which was born of our 
•wealth, and of the deadly sin which was our 
fatal inheritance ! 

Let us take a brief general glance at the wide 
field of discussion we are just leaving. 

On Friday, the twelfth day of the month of 
April, in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred 
and sixty-one, at half past four of the clock in 
the afternoon, a cannon was aimed and fired by 
the authority of South Carolina at the wall of a 
fortress belonging to the United States. Its ball 
carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty 
years, shaped and cooled in the mould of ma¬ 
lignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter 
of our national existence. Its muzzle was 
pointed at the stone which bore the symbol of 
our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its 
thunder died away, the telegraph clicked one 
word through every office of the land. That 
word was War ! 


46D 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


War is a child that devours its nurses one 
after another, until it is claimed by its true 
parents. This war has eaten its way backward 
through all the technicalities of lawyers, learned 
in the infinitesimals of ordinances and statutes ; 
through all the casuistries of divines, experts in 
the differential calculus of conscience and duty; 
until it stands revealed to all men as the natural 
and inevitable conflict of two incompatible forms 
of civilization, one or the other of which must 
dominate the central zone of the continent, and 
eventually claim the hemisphere for its devel¬ 
opment. 

We have reached the region of those broad 
principles and large axioms which the wise 
Romans, the world’s lawgivers, always recog¬ 
nized as above all special enactments. We 
have come to that solid substratum acknowl¬ 
edged by Grotius in his great Treatise : “ Ne¬ 
cessity itself, which reduces things to the mere 
right of Nature.” The old rules which were 
enough for our guidance in quiet times, have 
become as meaningless “ as moonlight on the 
dial of the day.” We have followed precedents 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


461 


as long as they could guide us ; now we must 
make precedents for the ages which are to suc¬ 
ceed us. 

If we are frightened from our object by the 
money we have spent, the current prices of 
United States stocks show that we value our 
nationality at only a small fraction of our wealth. 
If we feel that we are paying too dearly for it in 
the blood of our people, let us recall those grand 
words of Samuel Adams : — 

“ I should advise persisting in our struggle 
for liberty, though it were revealed from heaven 
that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to per¬ 
ish, and only one of a thousand were to survive 
and retain his liberty ! ” 

What we want now is a strong purpose ; the 
purpose of Luther, when he said, in repeating 
his Pater Noster, fiat voluntas mea, — let my 
will be done ; though he considerately added, 
quia Tua , — because my will is Thine. We 
want the virile energy of determination which 
made the oath of Andrew Jackson sound so like 
the devotion of an ardent saint that the record¬ 
ing angel might have entered it unquestioned 
among the prayers of the faithful. 


462 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


War is a grim business. Two years ago our 
women’s fingers were busy making “ Have¬ 
locks.” It seemed to us then as if the Havelock 
made half the soldier; and now we smile to 
think of those days of inexperience and illusion. 
We know now what War means, and we cannot 
look its dull, dead ghastliness in the face unless 
we feel that there is some great and noble prin¬ 
ciple behind it. It makes little difference what 
we thought we were fighting for at first; we 
know what we are fighting for now, and what 
we are fighting against. 

We are fighting for our existence. We say to 
those who would take back their several contri¬ 
butions to that undivided unity which we call 
the Nation ; the bronze is cast; the statue is on 
its pedestal; you cannot reclaim the brass you 
flung into the crucible ! There are rights, pos¬ 
sessions, privileges, policies, relations, duties, 
acquired, retained, called into existence in virtue 
of the principle of absolute solidarity, — belong¬ 
ing to the United States as an organic whole,— 
which cannot be divided, which none of its con¬ 
stituent parties can claim as its own, which per- 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


465 


ish out of its living frame when the wild forces 
of rebellion tear it limb from limb, and which 
it must defend, or confess self-government itself 
a failure. 

We are fighting for that Constitution upon 
which our national existence reposes, now sub¬ 
jected by those who fired the scroll on which 
it w*as written from the cannon at Fort Sumter, 
to all those chances which the necessities of war 
entail upon every human arrangement, but still 
the venerable charter of our wide Republic. 

We cannot fight for these objects without 
attacking the one mother cause of all the pro¬ 
geny of lesser antagonisms. Whether we know 
it or not, whether we mean it or not, we cannot 
help fighting against the system that has proved 
the source of all those miseries which the author 
of the Declaration of Independence trembled to 
anticipate. And this ought to make us willing 
to do and to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy 
Wars of old, in which it was glory enough to 
die, wars in which the one aim was to rescue the 
sepulchre of Christ from the hands of infidels. 
The sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! 


464 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


He rose from that burial-place more than eigh¬ 
teen hundred years ago. He is crucified where- 
ever his brothers are slain without cause; he 
lies buried wherever man, made in his Maker’s 
image, is entombed in ignorance lest he should 
learn the rights which his Divine Master gave 
him ! This is our Holy War, and we must 
fight it against that great General who will 
bring to it all the powers with which lie fought 
against the Almighty before he was cast down 
from heaven. He has retained many a cunning 
advocate to recruit for him ; he has bribed many 
a smooth-tongued preacher to be his chaplain ; 
he has engaged the sordid by their avarice, the 
timid by their fears, the profligate by their love 
of adventure, and thousands of nobler natures 
by motives which we can all understand; whose 
delusion we pity as we ought always to pity 
the error of those who know not what they do. 
Against him or for him we are all called upon to 
declare ourselves. There is no neutrality for 
any single true-born American. If any seek 
such a position, the stony finger of Dante’s 
awful muse points them to their place in the 
antechamber of the Halls of Despair, — 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL . 


465 


— “ with that ill band 

Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved, 

Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves 
Were only.” — 

— “ Fame of them the world hath none 
Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. 

Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.” 

We must use all the means which God has 
put into our hands to serve him against the ene¬ 
mies of civilization. We must make and keep 
the great river free, whatever it costs us ; it is 
strapping up the forefoot of the wild, untama¬ 
ble rebellion. We must not be too nice in the 
choice of our agents. Non eget Mauri jaculis ,— 
no African bayonets wanted, — was well enough 
while we did not yet know the might of that 
desperate giant we had to deal with; but Tros , 
Tyriusve , — white or black, — is the safer motto 
now ; for a good soldier, like a good horse, can¬ 
not be of a bad color. The iron-skins, as well 
as the iron-clads, have already done us noble 
service, and many a mother will clasp the re¬ 
turning boy, many a wife will welcome back the 
war-worn husband, whose smile would never 
again have gladdened his home, but that, cold 
20* 


DD 


466 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


in the shallow trench of the battle-field, lies the 
half-buried form of the unchained bondsman 
whose dusky bosom sheaths the bullet which 
would else have claimed that darling as his 
country’s sacrifice ! 

We shall have success if we truly will success, 
— not otherwise. It may be long in coming, — 
Heaven only knows through what trials and 
humblings we may have to pass before the full 
strength of the nation is duly arrayed and led 
to victory. We must be patient, as our fathers 
were patient; even in our worst calamities, we 
must remember that defeat itself may be a gain 
wherejt costs our enemy more in relation to his 
strength than it costs ourselves. But if, in the 
inscrutable providence of the Almighty, this 
generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations 
for the race, if we have not virtue enough to 
ennoble our whole people, and make it a nation 
of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying 
honor those who vindicated the insulted majesty 
of the Republic, and struck at her assailants so 
long as a drum-beat summoned them to the field 
of duty. 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


467 


Citizens of Boston, sons and daughters of 
New England, men and women of the North, 
brothers and sisters in the bond of the American 
Union, you have among you the scarred and 
wasted soldiers who have shed their blood for 
your temporal salvation. They bore your na¬ 
tion’s emblems bravely through the fire and 
smoke of the battle-field ; nay, their own bodies 
are starred with bullet-wounds and striped with 
sabre-cuts, as if to mark them as belonging to 
their country until their dust becomes a portion 
of the soil which they defended. In every 
Northern graveyard slumber the victims of this 
destroying struggle. Many whom you remem¬ 
ber playing as children amidst the clover-blos¬ 
soms of our Northern fields, sleep under name¬ 
less mounds with strange Southern wild-flowers 
blooming over them. By those wounds of liv¬ 
ing heroes, by those graves of fallen martyrs, by 
the hopes of your children, and the claims of 
your children’s children yet unborn, in the 
name of outraged honor, in the interest of vio¬ 
lated sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled 
nation, for the sake of men everywhere and of 


468 


THE INEVITABLE TRIAL. 


our common humanity, for the glory of God and 
the advancement of his kingdom on earth, 
your country calls upon you to stand by her 
through good report and through evil report, in 
triumph and in defeat, until she emerges from 
the great war of Western civilization, Queen of 
the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils 
of earth’s emancipated peoples ; until the flag 
that fell from the wall of Fort Sumter floats 
again inviolate, supreme, over all her ancient 
inheritance, every fortress, every capital, every 
ship, and this warring land is once more a 
United Nation! 


THE END. 


Cambridge s Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 








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